Some eight years into the 21st century, the threats to international security posed by the numbers, deployments and spread of nuclear weapons remain all too ominous. Disconcertingly, the possibility of a surprise attack – perhaps a tragic miscalculation or a criminal action – is an ongoing reality some six decades into the nuclear age.
Programmes
Oslo meeting
George Shultz and Sam Nunn are addressing the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG, clerked by BASIC) in London on Thursday after the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament that is underway now in Oslo, Norway.
From the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament website:
The Government of Norway, in cooperation with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Hoover Institution, is convening an international conference on Achieving the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, in Oslo 26-27 February 2008.
A world free of nuclear weapons
The United States should take the lead in forging a new global consensus on nuclear disarmament, married to an action plan of urgent interim steps to control and reduce nuclear weapons, according to two Cold War veterans Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr, former General Counsel and acting director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Ambassador Robert L Barry, former ambassador to the Stockholm Conference on Disarmament in Europe and member of the board of the British American Security and Information C
Iran update: number 114
Summary
- US: Iran must confess to making nuclear bomb
- Iran tests faster centrifuges with uranium
- IAEA report could be delayed by disagreement between Elbaradei and his staff
- Iran's Missile tests alarm international community
On Friday Gregory Schulte, chief US delegate to the IAEA demanded that Iran confess to trying to make nuclear weapons prior to 2003.
Congressmen, Reagan administration policy experts, and activists call for reducing US nuclear arsenal
US Rep James McGovern (D, Massachusetts) hosted a briefing titled 'Global Security Priorities in the 21st Century' on February 6, 2008, in Washington, DC. Panelists who participated in the briefing called for the United States to reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal and use the savings to increase funding for non-proliferation programs and international assistance for children as a means of strengthening US national security.
The panelists included:
US TV commercial heightens awareness over nuclear terrorism
The Partnership for a Secure America, a bipartisan group of government and foreign policy veterans, will start airing a television commercial in major cities to raise awareness about the threat of nuclear terrorism (see NTI report).
Des Browne’s speech
UK Secretary of Defence Des Browne addressed the Conference of Disarmament on February 5, announcing the call to fellow nuclear weapon states to send technical experts to a conference in London to discuss how they might cooperate to develop verification methods for future disarmament agreements.
In a particularly interesting paragraph he said:
Success with Iran requires moves towards disarmament
I have recently reflected that my youthful passion for disarmament originated from a black and white sense of justice, and that I have retained it through the insight that acts of logical self-interest often lead to immense risk and could ultimately lead to the destruction of civilisation. While climate change and other environmental threats arise from our corporate materialistic lifestyles, the threat of nuclear proliferation and Armageddon comes from fear, competition and the quest for power amongst elites. The injustice feels more carnal, the universal threat more outrageous.