UN nuclear talks stalled by Bush policies

People's Weekly World Newspaper Online - UN nuclear talks stalled by Bush policies: "Critics say the Bush administration’s policy to include first-strike use of nuclear weapons and funding to develop smaller, “more usable” nuclear weapons will only undermine the entire treaty by causing smaller, developing states, like North Korea, which recently withdrew from the treaty, to feel threatened and thus see a need to develop nuclear weapons for defense.

Wenceslao Carrera Doral, head of the Cuban delegation, said U.S. and NATO strategic doctrines now place even greater emphasis on the right to use force or the threat of force in international relations. These doctrines are of “concern for all humanity, particularly for poor and nonaligned countries,” he said.

Archbishop Celistino Migliore, representing the Vatican, said, “Compliance with [the NPT’s] disarmament provisions is also required: nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.” Although the 21st century opened with an act of terrorism on 9/11, that “must not be allowed to undermine the precepts of international humanitarian law,” Migliore said.

New Zealand’s minister for disarmament and arms control, Marian Hobbs, represented the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), consisting of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden and New Zealand. The coalition formed in 1998 as a group of “middle powers,” mostly U.S. allies, working at the international level for better implementation of the NPT’s Article VI, which states that the five nuclear powers must move to eliminate their nuclear stockpiles.

Hobbs spoke about new nuclear weapons free zones in all of Latin America, Africa, Mongolia, Australia and much of Oceania. She said she hoped for a future nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East and elsewhere.
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