South Asians Against Nukes - Year 10
April 13, 2009
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/1242

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Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)

Press Release [12 April 2009]

The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) welcomes
United States President Barrack Obama’s call for a “world without
nuclear weapons” and his assertion that “the existence of thousands”
of these is the Cold War’s “most dangerous legacy”. Equally worthy is
his acknowledgement that the US bears a special “moral
responsibility” to promote disarmament as the only power “to have
used a nuclear weapon”, and his emphatic rejection of the idea that
the spread and thereby use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

However, though he has talked of quite a few specific measures, this
call is not accompanied by adequate changes in doctrines and
strategic thinking. Obama continues to adhere to the fatally flawed
doctrine of nuclear deterrence, rely on the dangerous “Star Wars”-
style Ballistic Missile Defense programme, and stresses a stronger
non-proliferation regime with selective application, rather than
disarmament. Although Obama’s call for rapidly bringing into force
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and stopping fissile material
production as intermediate measures is welcome, he has made no
proposal for nuclear weapons elimination in the foreseeable future.

Despite limitations, Obama’s is a call of historic potential. The
statement puts nuclear disarmament on the global agenda and opens an
opportunity to make creative, principled and realistic proposals for
concrete steps towards a nuclear weapons-free world.

We call upon the Indian government to respond to this historic call
by committing itself to the goal of nuclear weapons elimination –
regional as well as global – by updating the 1988 Rajiv Gandhi plan
for stage-by-stage abolition of these weapons of terror and by taking
a leading role in the global arena to have a Nuclear Weapons
(Abolition) Convention as the instrument for effecting universal
nuclear disarmament in a time-bound manner.

Anil Chaudhury, Praful Bidwai, G. Subramanian

On behalf of the National Coordinating Committee, CNDP


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SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN):
An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned
about the dangers of Nuclearisation in South Asia
http://s-asians-against-nukes.org/

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not necessarily reflect the views of SAAN compilers.