BASIC MEDIA ADVISORY

10 MARCH 2005

What is going on at the US nuclear weapons laboratories in New Mexico and California and what might UK scientists from Aldermaston have been doing on their recent visit?

Greg Mello, Director of the Los Alamos Study Group, will be in London this weekend and until Tuesday evening to answer these questions and raise awareness about the Bush Administration plans for new nuclear warheads and a possible resumption of underground testing in the Nevada desert.

Mr Mello lives and works in New Mexico, where the world's two best-funded nuclear weapons facilities (Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories) are to be found. A former engineer, for the past decade, he has directed the Los Alamos Study Group, a nongovernmental organization devoted to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Mr. Mello's trip to London and Brussels stems from his view that American nuclear policy needs a closer review by leaders in other democracies. "You can't understand what's going on in U.S. nuclear policy by reading the U.S. newspapers, or even by following the debates in Congress. On the one hand, U.S. nuclear policies are substantially driven by institutional factors which are poorly understood in the capital, and on the other, they are expressions of military imperatives which are seldom if ever openly discussed in those places," said Mello.

"As a result, there is a widespread, serious misapprehension that identifies Bush Administration rhetoric and programs with some kind of dramatic change in U.S. nuclear policy. There has been no such change, only a gradual intensification and ripening of programs and imperatives already in place and at work."

Mello believes that these widespread misunderstandings about the nature of U.S. nuclear weapons programs and institutions, together with the failure of U.S. liberals to confront the contradictions inherent in nuclear deterrence, has led to an absence of vigorous and effective debate. The result, Mello argues, is that the American neo-conservative agenda, which is completely simpatico with the needs and views of the nuclear weapons bureaucracy, has come to dominate U.S. nuclear policy, with devastating consequences for diplomacy.

In hopes of building greater understanding of U.S. nuclear complex and its imperatives, Mello will be offering a kind of "virtual tour" of the major U.S. nuclear facilities together with a review of their programs and initiatives.

Mr. Mello is traveling with his wife Trish, the operations director of the Study Group. Another aspect of their trip is the interviews they hope to conduct with civic leaders, MEPs, and NGOs on camera, as part of a project to bring back to America the questions and expressions of concern being voiced elsewhere. "The impetus for change must come from those leaders who understand the issues and yet are not required to maintain silence about them for political and bureaucratic reasons," Mello said.

For further details about Greg Mello's programme while in London, or to arrange individual interviews, please call Nigel Chamberlain on 020 7324 4684 or e-mail him (nchamberlain at basicint.org).

ENDS