Today’s Washington Post features a piece by Jimmy Carter entitled “Saving Nonproliferation” about the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference beginning in early May at the United Nations.
In the piece, the former president writes: “So far the preparatory committee for the forthcoming NPT talks has failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the nonnuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal.
“Until recently all American presidents since Dwight Eisenhower had striven to restrict and reduce nuclear arsenals — some more than others. So far as I know, there are no present efforts by any of the nuclear powers to accomplish these crucial goals.
“The United States is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT….”
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JONATHAN GRANOFF
Amb. THOMAS GRAHAM, Jr.
Amb. ROBERT GREY, Jr.
Granoff is president of the Global Security Institute, which worked with the Carter Center in convening a consultation on the future of the NPT with top diplomats from around the world in January; see the above web page for a copy of the report resulting from the conference. Grey and Graham are on the Institute’s Bipartisan Security Group. Grey is former U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and was also head of the State Department UN Reform Team. Graham was involved in the negotiation of every major international arms control and nonproliferation agreement of the past 30 years.
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JOHN BURROUGHS
Executive director of the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Burroughs presented the paper “Building a Nuclear Weapons-Free Future” at the January meeting on the NPT at the Carter Center.
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ALICE SLATER
Co-founder of Abolition 2000, and a coordinator of its AbolitionNow! campaign to begin negotiations this year for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons, Slater said today: “While Carter’s remarks are welcome, the NPT Treaty does not simply call for the U.S. to ‘restrict and reduce’ its nuclear stockpiles, but to eliminate them. The treaty states: ‘Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.'” Slater is president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
