Wednesday, February 10, 2010

October 23, 2009 12:18 PM

A-Bomb Victims, NGOs Dissatisfied With Nuclear Panel's Action Plans

HIROSHIMA, Oct 23 (Bernama)-- Nuclear arms reduction plans crafted this week by an international panel in Hiroshima will take too long to bring about a world free of nuclear arms, atomic bomb survivors and anti-nuclear non-governmental organisations say.

According to Japan's Kyodo news agency, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament agreed on the action plans after a three-day meeting in the world's first atom-bombed city to discuss recommendations to world leaders on concrete steps for nuclear arms reduction.

A report compiled by the commission contains a three-phase action agenda for the short, medium and long terms covering the periods to 2012, 2025 and beyond 2025 to reduce nuclear weapons in the world to zero.

Kazuo Okoshi, 69, of the Hiroshima Council of A-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, said: "Hiroshima Mayor (Tadatoshi) Akiba and the Mayors for Peace set the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons by 2020 while the ICNND called for reducing the number of nuclear arms only to a certain level by 2025."

"We, the survivors, would like to see the goal (of a nuclear-free world) while we are alive," he said.

"It is not good to lag behind the current momentum for nuclear abolition," Okoshi said, referring to hopes fueled following the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to United States President Barack Obama, who outlined a vision for a world without nuclear weapons in a speech in April.

In Hiroshima, commission members agreed to drastically reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the world from the current more than 20,000 to an unspecified level. The level is presumed to be higher than the initial target of 1,000 or fewer stipulated in an earlier draft report by the commission.

Behind the ICNND's change of heart was strong opposition from some nuclear-armed states to reducing their nukes at the same rate as Russia and the United States, according to sources close to the commission. Such states insisted their stockpiles are already kept at minimum levels.

Another possible stumbling block for ambitious reductions brought up in the meeting was the physical capability for dismantling nuclear warheads, Yoriko Kawaguchi, co-chairwoman of the commission, told reporters after the conference.

She was apparently referring to a lack of dismantling facilities for nuclear arms, as only one plant in the United States and two in Russia are currently believed to exist.

"As for nuclear warheads which we are not able to dismantle, we will make sure that their nuclear fissile materials will not be reused by locking them up in safely guarded environments," Kawaguchi said.

Meanwhile, Philip White, international liaison officer of Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre, said limiting the parameters for nuclear weapons use should be the priority over the target number for existing nuclear warheads as doing so could influence the outcome of the United States' new nuclear posture review which is scheduled to be released by the end of this year.

The commission reached a consensus to urge every nuclear state to commit to a no-first-use policy, a pledge by nuclear powers not to use nuclear weapons unless they or their allies come under nuclear attack, by 2025, but White said the policy needs to be adopted sooner as the first step toward total elimination of nuclear arms.

"I have an impression that the ICNND asks opinions of conservatives too much whose thinking was caught up with that of some 10 years ago," White said.

"It's all too slow, unnecessarily slow," he said.

White recommended the Japanese government declare its support for the no-first-use doctrine and encourage the United States to adopt the doctrine before the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in May.

The ICNND plans to release the final report on its recommendations in January in hope of building an international consensus in the run-up to the NPT review conference in New York.

However, the co-chairs of the commission, Kawaguchi and former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, stressed the importance of the pragmatic and attainable aspects of the action plans as they believe that being too ambitious can lead to failure.

"I think our report marries the idealism and realism and actually demonstrates that each one of these objectives we describe is achievable," Evans told Kyodo News during an interview in Hiroshima.

"Some will take longer than the others, but that's the reality," he said. "This is a very useful and educative tool for policy makers, media and the wider public about very, very complicated issues," Evans said.

The ICNND is an independent global initiative established under the leadership of Australia and Japan in 2008.

-- BERNAMA

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