A new international group committed to eliminating nuclear weapons over the next 25 years has enlisted scores of world leaders as its campaign gets under way at a conference in Paris tomorrow.
“The aim is to get to zero,” said Richard Burt, chief strategic weapons negotiator for former president US president George Bush.
Even Iran is considered a potential supporter, he said in an interview.
“If there is growing support by nuclear powers and public opinion worldwide, I think it becomes harder for any government, including Iran, to cross that barrier,” Burt said.
The group, Global Zero, is proposing deep cuts in US and Russian nuclear arsenals, a verification and enforcement system and phased reduction leading to the elimination of all stockpiles.
After the meeting, delegations will go to Moscow for talks with Russian officials on Wednesday and to Washington to see officials from the administration of US President George W. Bush and possibly advisers to president-elect Barack Obama on Thursday.
Ultimately, the planners are hoping to stage a world summit in January 2010.
More than 100 political, military, business, religious and civic leaders have lent their support to the campaign.
Listed supporters include former US president Jimmy Carter; former US secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger; former US defense secretary Frank Carlucci; and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The launching in Paris follows 18 months of consultations.
Global Zero urges US-Russian negotiations to cut back nuclear stockpiles to roughly 1,000 weapons apiece, from current arsenals of about 5,000 warheads each, followed by a second phase bringing in countries such as China, Britain and France.
From there, Burt says, the aim would be to attract would-be members of the nuclear club such as Iran.
“You got to think of this in terms of faith,” Burt said.
Daryl Kimball, director of the private Arms Control Association, said Global Zero’s approach was different from other campaigns in that its thrust is to encourage leaders to meet to discuss and eventually negotiate a timetable for disarmament.
“Most past strategies,” Kimball said, “have focused on a step-by-step approach toward zero, a process that has gone far too slowly.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS