Category: ARMAMENTS

Viewpoint by Kevin Martin*

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama plans to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit May 26-27 in Japan. Hiroshima is an impressively rebuilt, thriving city of a million people. The city was obliterated by the first atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945, followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

Eighty-three-year-old Shigeko Sasamori was a young girl when the “fire bomb” (the words “atomic bomb” were not yet known) exploded a mile from where she stood. In the unimaginable chaos that engulfed the city after its devastation, Shigeko and her family were relatively fortunate, as their collapsed house barely missed crushing her mother to death, and after a period of severe disorientation and separation, Shigeko was reunited with her parents.

Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Concerted efforts for entry into force of the treaty banning all nuclear tests and ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons are gathering momentum at the United Nations and other international fora.

Within days of Japan and Kazakhstan issuing a joint statement on “achieving the early entry into force” of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban-Treaty (CTBT), the Las Vergas Review-Journal reported that the U.S. is “inching closer to the day when full-scale nuclear weapons tests are banned forever”.

Earlier U.S. President Barack Obama wrote in his opinion article for the Washington Post: “The security of the world demands that nations — including the United States – ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and conclude a new treaty to end the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons once and for all.”

Analysis by Jayantha Dhanapala*

KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) – In the practice of general medicine a placebo is defined as a medicine or a procedure prescribed for the psychological benefit for the patient – to humour or placate rather than for any physiological or therapeutic effect. U.S. President Barack Obama’s rhetoric in Prague in April 2009 gave the world a tantalizing vision of a nuclear weapon free world: “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War …. I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Since then we have had the anti-climax of four Nuclear Security Summits and repeated warnings about nuclear terrorism but no meaningful nuclear disarmament.

Pocketing his prematurely awarded Nobel Peace Prize, the U.S. President has reverted to being the conventional leader of the greatest military-industrial complex in the world spending approximately US $ 610 billion annually of the global military expenditure of US $ 1.8 trillion and a staggering US $ 355 billion over the next ten years on nuclear weapon modernization.

By J Natranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The international community must pursue broader measures of prevention in the context of the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy, in particular by addressing the conditions conducive to terrorism, especially preventing violent extremism, stopping the flow of foreign fighters, blocking terrorist financing, and working to promote human rights and sustainable development, according to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Reacting to the outcome of the Nuclear Security Summit that concluded on April 1 in Washington, D.C. Ban’s Spokesperson said: “The Secretary-General welcomes the outcome of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. He wholeheartedly endorses the Communiqué adopted by the participating States as well as the Action Plan in support of the United Nations. These will help to ensure that the gains made through this process will be sustained in the future.”

By Jamshed Baruah | IDN-INPS News Analysis

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN | INPS) – The 25th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, the twentieth year of the opening for signature of the treaty to ban all kinds of nuclear tests and the unanimous advisory by the world’s highest court in 1996 are three significant hallmarks of the year 2016.

“These historical dates are an important occasion for pooling the efforts of all countries to promote a nuclear-free world,” said Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on March 2 during a meeting in Astana with the heads of foreign diplomatic missions accredited in the republic.

By Daisaku Ikeda * | IDN-INPS Viewpoint

TOKYO (IDN | INPS) – Last year’s NPT Review Conference closed without bridging the chasm between the nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states. It was deeply regrettable that no consensus was reached at this significant juncture marking the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hope still remains, however, thanks to a number of important developments. These include: the growing number of countries endorsing the Humanitarian Pledge, a commitment to work together for the resolution of the nuclear arms issue; the adoption in December 2015 by the UN General Assembly of several ambitious resolutions calling for a breakthrough; and rising calls from civil society for the prohibition and abolition of nuclear weapons. READ in JAPANESE

By Jamshed Baruah | IDN-InDepthNews Analysis

GENEVA (IDN) – The stalemate on nuclear weapons disarmament needs to be resolved amid increasing concern about the “prodigious” number of warheads still in circulation, said former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan addressing a Working Group at the UN in Geneva.

But the first session of the Open Ended Working Group on Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations (OEWG) did not come close to breaking the stalemate. The nuclear armed states did not participate in the deliberations February 22-26, though several countries relying on nuclear weapons joined. These included many NATO countries as well as Japan, South Korea and Australia.

By Ramesh Jaura | IDN-InDepthNews Analysis

BERLIN | ASTANA (IDN) – Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov has urged the civil society, social movements and the public at large to support governments in achieving a nuclear-weapons-free world by 2045, when the United Nations will turn 100, and to help in the establishment of a Global Anti-Nuclear Movement,

These goals were part of key international initiatives President Nursultan Nazarbayev tabled during the General Assembly session in September 2015. He also called for creating a single global anti-terrorist network, allocating 1 percent of countries’ defence budgets to sustainable development, organizing a high-level international conference on reaffirming the principles of international law and coordinating international efforts under the UN on promoting green technologies.