Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-177"
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"en.19991027.6.3-177"2
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"Mr President, in voting against the Test Ban Treaty the American Senate has been irresponsible, and at the same time has become responsible for putting the world at serious risk of a nuclear holocaust. Senator Jesse James pompously said that the Treaty is dead and buried. He is known for his fundamentalism, but he did not realise, or perhaps he realised full well, that the signing of the Treaty was the first step towards the concrete realisation of the hope that what the United States did with the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never be repeated. What a sad prospect for our century! In fact, in the country which wishes to set itself up as a moral and strategic leader, groups seem to prevail which, for the sake of profits and military and nuclear supremacy, are not afraid of destroying themselves too. Actually, maybe we should not be surprised. These groups are the same ones which continue to inflict the death penalty and not pay the amounts due to the United Nations, thereby contributing to the loss of legitimacy and functionality of a structure which was founded on the principle of peoples’ right to be free from war.
What the Senate has done is sheer madness and, as Commissioner Patten was saying, it may not even have been done for strategic reasons but because of internal struggles, which makes the matter worse and even more shameful. Above all, as we have seen, this is encouraging other countries which already have nuclear capabilities, not to ratify the Treaty, and inciting even more countries to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. We have seen that Russia did not waste any time, and the day before yesterday it tested a Steel RS 18 intercontinental ballistic missile. What the Japanese Minister is doing is also worrying. And China, which has carried out 45 nuclear tests, had assured us it wanted ratification to be accelerated. Now all of these things are certainly in doubt.
Several times, Parliament has come out in favour of an end to nuclear weapons. We must work hard to ensure that those countries which have not yet ratified the Treaty do so as soon as possible. Here are just a few examples – China, Russia, India and Israel, which is still holding Mr Mordekaivanour as a conscientious objector in prison. We must also put a stop to Nuclear Sharing, as laid down in articles 1 and 2 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which states that no State in possession of nuclear weapons can, directly or indirectly, transfer weapons to another country. On the contrary, we have seen that large quantities of nuclear weapons have been brought to NATO bases, against the wishes of the local population who have chosen to live in nuclear-free areas. The European Union is certainly active in consolidating the path to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. I do not want to lose confidence that it is possible to make this world more rational, and that it will stop producing what could destroy it. I am convinced that peace movements against nuclear weapons, which achieved so much in the seventies and eighties, could take up their activities again in cooperation with us and our Parliament, so that we can truly live in a nuclear-free world."@en1
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