BASIC PRESS RELEASE

FRIDAY 23 APRIL 2004 - FOR IMMEDIATE USE

Nuclear proliferation under the 'special relationship'

Recently, there has been a lot said about democracy and the European Constitution.

Meanwhile, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have been quietly discussing the renewal of their 46 year-old agreement to share nuclear materials, technology and expertise without any parliamentary or public debate.

And this is going on behind closed doors in Whitehall and Washington at the same time as nations are preparing to gather in New York on Monday 26 April for a two-week conference to discuss how to curb nuclear proliferation and move towards nuclear disarmament.

In 1958, the US and the UK signed the Agreement for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence Purposes "considering that their mutual security and defense require that they be prepared to meet the contingencies of atomic warfare".

The Mutual Defence Agreement was last renewed in Washington DC on 23 May 1994 by the signatures of Thomas E. McNamara for the United States and Jeremy Greenstock for the United Kingdom.

In the interests of open debate, BASIC has placed a copy of the Mutual Defence Agreement on our web site alongside a briefing detailing how we believe it to be a breach of Article I of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which was written to prevent the nuclear powers transferring "to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons ... directly or indirectly".

BASIC is encouraging delegations to the 2004 NPT PrepCom in New York to ask the United States and the United Kingdom to explain why they are planning to renew the Mutual Defence Agreement later this year when the two nations are obliged by international agreement to desist from nuclear collaboration (under Article I) and move to nuclear disarmament (under Article VI).

The Mutual Defence Agreement (as amended 1994) and 'Time to put Article I under the Spotlight' can be downloaded from BASIC's NPT 2004 web page at: http://www.basicint.org/nuclear/NPT/main.htm.

For further information, please call Nigel Chamberlain on 020 7324 4684 or Nicola Butler on 020 8440 9276.