2020 Vision aimed at dismantling nukes
Thalif DEEN
When leaders of the world’s eight most industrialised nations — the
United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and
Russia, known as the G8 — hold their annual summit meeting in Hokkaido
in early July, they are likely to reject a seemingly backhanded
invitation: a visit to the Peace Memorial Museum in the city of
Hiroshima.
The museum, one of Japan’s more sombre tourist attractions, is a grim
reminder of the horrors of nuclear war, pictorially depicting the
devastation caused to Hiroshima by a U.S. atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945. A
second Japanese city, Nagasaki, was nuked three days later.
And within one year, 140,000 died as a result of the U.S. attacks.
Emiko Okada, a 71-year-old survivor of the atomic blasts 63 years ago,
has sent letters to all eight leaders asking them to visit Hiroshima
during their summit Jul. 7-9 in Toyakocho, Hokkaido.
Writing on behalf of some of the Hiroshima survivors, she says: “We
are the people who can give you the best perspective on the horrors of
nuclear weapons as we live through it, and many of us have suffered
numerous physical ailments over the past 62 years and lost loved ones in
the blast.”
But none of the eight, not even leaders of the four declared nuclear
powers among them, the United States, France, Britain and Russia, has
any plans to visit Hiroshima.
According to the Japanese news agency Kyodo, three of the eight,
including the Heads of Government of Britain, Germany and the United
States, responded to the invitation, but regretted that time constraints
did not permit a visit to Hiroshima.
The response from the White House read: “Although the President
(George W. Bush) would very much enjoy an occasion of this nature,
already established travel schedules and official obligations for this
trip preclude us from adding events to his calendar.”
The only sympathetic response, according to Kyodo, came from Helmut
Hoffman, head of Germany’s Nuclear Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Division, who said: “Your letter is an appeal and encouragement to us
(the German Government) to press ahead with the vision of a nuclear
weapons-free world.”
Last August, a ‘Peace Declaration’ adopted by the city of Hiroshima
detailed the impact of the US attacks that fateful day, describing it as
“hell on earth”.
“The eyes of young girls watching the parachute (which opened in the
skies before the blast) were melted. Their faces became giant charred
blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their
fingernails.”
Many who escaped death initially are still suffering from leukaemia,
thyroid cancer, and a vast array of other afflictions. Addressing a
conference sponsored by the Tokyo-based Global Network of Religions for
Children (GNRC) in Hiroshima last month, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said his
city was one of the leading campaigners for a 2020 vision on nuclear
disarmament: a proposal to end nuclear weapons by the year 2020.
Because cities suffer the most in times of war, a group of mayors
called Mayors for Peace launched the “Hiroshima/Nagasaki Protocol”
during a preparatory meeting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) in Geneva last April. The group challenged NPT diplomats to
prepare for a “decisive decade for nuclear disarmament”.
Akiba pointedly asked Geneva-based UN ambassadors: “Will you act in
good faith to eliminate these heinous and totally unnecessary threats to
our survival, or will you allow them to spread, most certainly to be
used?”
If they did not move effectively to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free
world by 2020, he told a meeting of ambassadors, “you will be partially
responsible for the nuclear catastrophe I have no doubt will befall us
before that date. I urge you not to underestimate the gravity and
urgency of this decision.”
John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’
Committee on Nuclear Policy, says the 20:20 vision of Mayor Akiba of
Hiroshima and Mayors for Peace, with more than 2,000 members worldwide,
is important.
“They underline the necessity of action that actually ends ongoing
reliance of the world’s most powerful countries on their nuclear forces
as central instruments of national policy,” Burroughs told IPS.
Recently, he pointed out, the rhetoric of achieving a nuclear
weapons-free world has gone mainstream, due in part to the commendable
efforts of former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, who is leading
the campaign in the United States.
“However, while there is more readiness to promote steps like the
test ban treaty and a ban on producing fissile materials for nuclear
weapons, there is little sign as yet of decision-makers taking on board
the mission of getting down to the brass tacks of marginalizing and
eliminating nuclear forces,” he said.
Burroughs said popular support for getting serious certainly exists.
As a representative of Mayors for Peace himself, he observed the latest
sign of this at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in
Miami, Jun. 19-23, which unanimously adopted a resolution entitled
“Support for the Elimination of All Nuclear Weapons by the Year 2020.”
The resolution recommends that the US Government “urgently consider”
an agreement — the “Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol” — as a means of
“fulfilling the promise of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by the year
2020.”
This would meet the obligation set by the International Court of
Justice in 1996 to “conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament
in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”
While the resolution was not debated but rather approved summarily as
part of a set of resolutions dealing with international matters,
Burroughs said, the very fact that it was not singled out for special
attention illustrates that — outside of “national security” circles —
the need for global nuclear disarmament is widely accepted.
As part of the ongoing campaign, mayors around the world will also be
signing on to a “Cities Appeal” that will promote the Hiroshima-Nagasaki
Protocol.
And in line with the original vision of a Nuclear Weapons Convention
being negotiated by 2010, the mayors will call for all negotiations
envisioned in the Protocol to be completed by the 65th U.N. General
Assembly sessions in 2010.
Inter Press Service (IPS) |