@@ U.S. promised in 2000, to get rid of it's nukes! @@
Arash
May 14, 2005
Strengthen the NPT – or Else
Dr. James Gordon Prather
Nuclear weapons physicist
Nuclear bomb tester at Lawrence Livermore
Technical director of nuclear bomb testings at Sandia
Chief scientist of the U.S. Army
U.S. Navy veteran
One of the more hilarious charges leveled against Bonkers Bolton
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton) recently was that he was too preoccupied
with winning confirmation as ambassador to the United Nations to prepare the U.S.
delegation for the Seventh Review Conference of the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty).
Levelers of this charge assume that Bush and Bolton want to strengthen the NPT. Wrong.
There was entirely too much "strengthening" of the NPT at the Sixth Review Conference,
five years ago, to suit Bush-Bolton.
The final report of the Sixth Review Conference in 2000
(http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/NPT2000FinalText.htm) began by reaffirming the
recommendations contained in the final report of the Fifth Review Conference in 1995
(http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/1995dec.html).
But it took delegates to the Seventh Review Conference two weeks to even agree on an
agenda because the U.S. delegation – led by a John Bolton underling named Stephen
Rademaker (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/12813.htm) – didn’t want the final report of
the Sixth Review Conference to even be discussed, much less be reaffirmed.
Sergio Duarte of Brazil, president of the Seventh Review Conference, claims the resulting
agenda, wherein "the review will be conducted in the light of the decisions and the
resolution of previous conferences," "met the concerns of delegations who had stressed
that the decisions of past review conferences – particularly those of 1995 and 2000 on a
nuclear weapons-free Middle East and '13 practical steps' toward disarmament
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_steps) – not be diminished in any way."
Among other things, the Sixth Review Conference Report affirmed:
"An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total
elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all states
parties are committed under Article VI".
Disarm?
"The importance and urgency of signatures and ratifications, without delay and without
conditions and in accordance with constitutional processes, to achieve the early entry
into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTBT).
Ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty?
"The Sixth Conference reaffirms that IAEA is the competent authority responsible for
verifying and assuring … compliance with its safeguards agreements … with a view to
preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other
nuclear explosive devices.… It is the conviction of the Conference that nothing should be
done to undermine the authority of IAEA in this regard".
Don’t challenge the authority of the IAEA?
"The [Sixth] Conference notes the reaffirmation by the nuclear-weapon states of their
commitment to the United Nations Security Council resolution 984 (1995) on security
assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of
Nuclear Weapons".
Give assurances to Iran that we won’t attack them with nuclear weapons?
Anyone who thinks Bush-Bolton want to strengthen a treaty that already makes such demands
on us is as crazy as the Likudniks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud).
So John Bolton underling Stephen Rademaker told the Seventh Review Conference
(http://www.un.int/usa/05_089.htm),
"The NPT is fundamentally a treaty for mutual security. It is clear that the security of
all member states depends on unstinting adherence to the treaty’s nonproliferation norms
by all other parties. The treaty’s principal beneficiaries are those member states that do
not possess nuclear weapons because they can be assured that their neighbors also do not
possess nuclear weapons.
"Strict compliance with nonproliferation obligations is essential to regional stability,
to forestalling nuclear arms races, and to preventing resources needed for economic
development from being squandered in a destabilizing and economically unproductive pursuit
of weapons".
Wait a minute. What was that about "preventing resources from being squandered"?
You heard right. It is the Bush-Bolton-Likudnik position that Iran is in noncompliance
with the NPT because they have contracted with Russia to construct nuclear power plants at
Bushehr.
Iran is oil-rich. Therefore, Iran doesn’t need nuclear power plants. Therefore Iran must
have a nuclear weapons program!
So if the NPT doesn’t already prevent the Iranians from "squandering" resources in
"economically unproductive" activities, then it must be modified so that it does.
What if the Seventh Review Conference refuses to make this and other Bush-Bolton
modifications to the NPT?
Well, Stephen Rademaker suggested the Seventh Review Conference endorse the Bush-Bolton
Proliferation Security Initiative as an alternative.
The Proliferation Security Initiative, PSI (http://www.state.gov/t/np/rls/other/34726.htm)
is a global effort that aims to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their
delivery systems, and related materials worldwide.
Announced by President Bush on May 31, 2003, it stems from the National Strategy to Combat
Weapons of Mass Destruction issued in December 2002.
"That strategy recognizes the need for more robust tools to defeat the proliferation of
WMD around the world, and specifically identifies interdiction as an area where greater
focus will be placed".
More robust tools? Like preemptive strikes against "economically unproductive" activities
in Iran?
Stay tuned, especially during June and July.
Dr. Prather's radio interviews
May 7, 2005
http://www.weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/prather4.mp3
April 9, 2005
http://www.weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/prather3.mp3
February 5, 2005
http://www.weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/prather2.mp3
December 4, 2004
http://www.weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/prather.mp3
February 16, 2005
Part 1
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-02-16-Charles-04.mp3
Part 2
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-02-16-Charles-05.mp3
* Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national
security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of
Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant
for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the
Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations
Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (http://www.llnl.gov) in California and Sandia National
Laboratory (http://www.sandia.gov) in New Mexico.
http://www.antiwar.com/prather
Kavik Kang
news:DxQje.3620$pi1....@newscontent-01.sprint.ca...
Are you on crack? The US has never agreed to completely elminate it's
nuclear arsenal. We have, however, eliminated most of it. The Russians, on
the other hand, have hardly reduced their cold war stockpiles at all. So
any complaining about failure to reduce nuclear stockpiles is a complaint to
take to the Russians, not the US. We have scaled back to the minimum
arsenal that our nation requires, the Russians have done almost nothing to
reduce theirs. So your complaint is with them, not us. You really don't
have the first clue about nuclear weapons, why do attempt to discuss a
subject that you very obviously don't know anything about?
"There is no putting the nuclear genie back into the bottle", those words
are famous for a reason. Nuclear weapons will always be with us, it is not
possible to eliminate all of them. It simply can't be done. If you weren't
so clueless you would know that already. The US and Russia will always
maintain an aresenal large enough to destroy the entire planet, you can be
certain of that.
If all nuclear weapons were elminated, anyone who built a nuclear bomb would
rule the world. God you are stupid!