White House Set to Submit U.S.-Russian Civil Nuclear Pact to Congress

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - UNITED NATIONS -- The Obama administration within the next few days intends to submit a U.S.-Russian civil nuclear cooperation agreement to Congress for review, just as Washington is pressing for Moscow’s support on sanctions against Iran, U.S. officials tell Global Security Newswire (see GSN, Sept. 9, 2008).

(May. 5) - Activists, shown near a train loaded with depleted uranium in France last month, protest exports of nuclear waste to Russia. The Obama administration plans to seek congressional approval of a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that could enable the United States to send its own waste to its former Cold War rival (Bertrand Langlois/Getty Images).
“These kinds of agreements, from a practical standpoint, are a model for how countries can pursue their inherent right to nuclear energy without a greater proliferation risk,” a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of not being named.
However, behind the scenes, the administration is reportedly having qualms about submitting the accord to Capitol Hill in short order, having heard negative feedback last week from both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate about how this deal might affect other pending legislation. More >>>

A World Without Nuclear Weapons- Joe Cirincione

Toward a nuclear-free world: a German view

January 9, 2009 -In 2007 Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn issued an appeal for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Their knowledge and experience as respected secretaries of state and defense and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee under Republican and Democrat administrations gave their concerns about the growing nuclear threat special weight.

Being realists, they knew that the abolition of all nuclear weapons could only be achieved gradually, and therefore they proposed urgent practical steps aimed at realizing this vision. More >>>

Spokesman tells UK to end double standards on nuclear disarmament

TEHRAN (IRNA December 13 2008) -- Foreign Ministry spokesman advised Britain government to end its double standards and selective policies toward nuclear disarmament.

Responding to the recent claims of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband concerning Iran's nuclear issue, Hassan Qashqavi advised the UK government to implement its obligations upon Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and take practical steps towards world nuclear disarmament. 

""As a matter of fact, Miliband's stances mean the UK is escaping from implementation of NPT, while accusing others to deceive world public opinion,"" Qashqavi said. 



Concerning Miliband's claims about reduction of 20 percent of the UK military nuclear capability in the past 12 months, Qashqavi said, ""British government, by storing 190 to 200 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, is trying to modernize its nuclear infrastructure so that it can promote its weapons qualities to make up for its old warheads. 

David Miliband in an article published on December 9, 2008, in some British newspapers talked about UK government's obligations for multilateral nuclear disarmament and preventing what he called Iran's proliferation of nuclear ability. More >>>

A world without nuclear weapons

Nuclear policy is a major component of United States foreign relations and security policy, and the U.S. approach to the North Korean nuclear issue is also realized within this framework.

The starting point for the nuclear policy of the Barack Obama administration, which is soon to take office, differs from that of the George W. Bush administration in two respects. First, it fully acknowledges the failure of U.S. nuclear policy since the end of the Cold War. The more than 30 kilograms of plutonium extracted by North Korea is a problem, but the amount of nuclear material possessed by a total of over 40 countries throughout the world amounts to no less than 3,000 tons, a quantity sufficient to make 250,000 nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, the United States and Russia still hold tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and nation after nation is attempting to join the ranks of countries with nuclear capabilities, including North Korea and Iran. The world is now in its second period of nuclear proliferation. The threat that most concerns the United States is terrorist attacks using nuclear weapons, and that possibility is greater now than ever. Everyone has simply been fortunate thus far. The United States has thus far neglected to make efforts to observe this crisis in terms of a comprehensive nuclear policy. More >>>

Global zero

December 13th 2008 - If Barack Obama sent the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Congress for ratification early in the new session, that would be an excellent start. Since it was signed in 1996, 148 other countries have ratified it, but it cannot come into effect until the United States does, too. And then he could get on with banning the nuclear weapons themselves, not just the tests.

There's a new initiative, launched in Paris last Tuesday (December 9) under the title Global Zero, in which more than a 100 world leaders endorse the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons completely. That may have a slightly antique ring to it - don't these people know that the Cold War ended ages ago? - but in fact the nuclear weapons are still there.

Some 20,000 of them, in fact. And last July, at a rally in Berlin, Obama publicly adopted the same goal: "This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.'' More >>>

Leaders meet in Paris to call for the elimination of nuclear arms

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 -- More than 100 prominent military, political, faith, and business leaders met in Paris December 8-9 for the inaugural conference of Global Zero -- a new international initiative committed to achieving a binding verifiable agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons by combining high-level diplomacy and policy work with global public campaigning.

A delegation of these Global Zero leaders will hold a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday to discuss the new campaign.

At the press conference, Global Zero leaders will announce the outcomes of the conference, including: next steps in developing the step-by-step plan for eliminating nuclear weapons; new poll results of 21 countries about the idea of an international agreement for getting to zero nuclear weapons; and the unveiling of the new, multi-lingual Global Zero website -- www.globalzero.org -- where people can get involved and show their support by signing the Global Zero declaration.

WHO:
-- K. Shankar Bajpai, the former Secretary of the Ministry of External
Affairs of India
-- Richard Burt, the former U.S. Chief Negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) with the former Soviet Union and former U.S. Ambassador to Germany
-- Shaharyar Khan, the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan
-- Lt. Gen. (ret) Talat Masood of Pakistan
-- Malcolm Rifkind, the former Defense and Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom

More >>>

Ex-Leaders Launch Nuclear Disarmament Initiative

Disarmament: The forgotten issue

The world should seek inspiration from past successes and aim to for global disarmament by 2020. It can be done, says Dan Plesch. From openDemocracy.

By Dan Plesch for openDemocracy (20/12/07)

"Peace on Earth" is a seasonal wish at this time of year. It also one of the themes in Stanley Kubrick's excoriating satire of militaristic madness, Dr Strangelove. But whether the message is taken sincerely or cynically, it is no fantasy. For peace on earth - in the form of world disarmament - is practical by 2020. This article suggests how.

Disarmament has virtually disappeared from the political agenda. In the west it has become the word that dare not speak its name. In particular, the media and establishment politics in the United States and the Britain ignore it. Yet disarmament is arguably as important to sustainable human survival as global warming or world poverty - in some ways even more so.

The urgency of the problem of armaments is clear in almost every news bulletin: massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the fear of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists, Star Wars deployments in Poland and Britain (and Vladimir Putin's warnings of their risks), the destruction caused by cluster-bombs and small arms - these are only a few of countless examples.

Between them, the United States and Russia possess 5,000 missiles that really are ready to fire in "45 minutes." Such a scale of threat would in any other period have placed disarmament at the centre of international politics - as it was since the end of the "great war" in 1918 until the mid-1990s. US presidents from John F Kennedy to Ronald Reagan were judged in large part on their achievements in the field of arms control and disarmament.

In the last decade, however, the marginalization of disarmament has been led by the same ultra-conservative forces in the US that propelled George W Bush into the presidency.

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