DECLARATION The General Meeting of the « Nuclear Phasing-out » Network (a grouping of 725 associations), meeting in GRANVILLE (Normandy) on 4-5 February 2006, adopted the following statement:
DECLARATION
The Iran nuclear dossier has just been passed on to the UN Security Council by the IAEA. Between now and the definitve report which its director Mr ElBaradei must present on March 6, Iran is ordered to convince the international community that its so-called civil programme is not intended to make nuclear weapons. Knowing that both the uranium 235 used as fuel in nuclear powerplants and the plutonium that comes out as a byproduct can be used for fission bombs, Iran will find it hard to prove that it has no intention of following the example of Israel, India, Pakistan or North Korea among others.
In reality the current crisis results from the contradiction of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which promotes the diffusion of nuclear technologies in its Article IV and bans their military use in its Article VI. But as Mr ElBaradei recognised as early as February 2002, all nuclear reactors (including those sold by France or programmed by France like the EPR) are proliferative.
The crisis result also from the hypocrisy of the nuclear states parties on the NPT, including France, which for decades have failed to respect their formal undertaking to eliminate their nuclear weapons, while all the time requiring other states to not obtain them. The others can therefore say : « What is good for you is good for us too » - even if it is catastrophic for everyone.
Thus, after the two Iraq wars, the first of which was really intended to deprive Saddam Hussein of nuclear weapons (and the second claimed to be), the Middle East risks suffering, on nuclear grounds, a new military intervention which could ignite the whole region. These operations have been explored by US and Israeli strategists and envisaged for the end of March this year. The use of so-called « miniaturised » nuclear weapons has even been envisaged. That would be, 60 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a reopening of Pandora’s box - and President Chirac’s speech in Britanny on 19 January invites just such a danger.
The only sensible alternative to this war logic, the alternative which must be negotiated on the international level, is the military and civil denuclearising of the planet, particularly in the explosive regions of the Middle East, South Asia (India-Pakistan) and the Korean peninsula. We must recognise the lethal character of atomic energy, and phase out military and non-military nuclearism as quickly as possible.
The « Nuclear Phasing-out » Network, a signatory of the International Appeal for a Peaceful Solution to the Iran Crisis, calls on all French citizens and their elected representatives to work for this goal.
Joint Media Release - ACDN & the «Nuclear Phasing-out » Network
IRAN : No proliferation! No war!
Negotiate for total, universal and controlled nuclear disarmament
COMMUNIQUE, 7 February 2006
Just as the IAEA has passed on the Iran nuclear dossier to the UN Security Concil, more than fifty parliamentarians, more than two hundred international and national NGOs from some forty countries, and various personalities including the Mayor of Hiroshima, have written to the US President, the President of Iran and the Israeli Prime Miniuster asking them to resolve the crisis by diplomatic means, ruling out any military action. They call on the powers possessing nuclear weapons not to use them in any circumstance, least of all on the pretext of preventing proliferation or against countries that do not possess them.
The nuclear states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty - USA, Russia, UK, France and China - have for decades flouted the undertaking they made to eliminate their own nuclear arsenals (article VI of the NPT). Therefore they are badly placed to insist that other states respect their undertakings and not make nuclear weapons with the technology which they buy from the nuclear states themselves. The Iran Crisis results from this double hypocrisy in which France plays an active part, both by claiming that nuclear weapons are indispensible to her security but not anyone else’s, and by exporting nuclear technologies which enable these arms to be built.
A war against Iran, on top the war in Iraq, could cause huge human losses, ignite the whole Middle East, increase the risks of terrorist reprisals and destabilise the world economy.
In France as in Europe, citizens are invited to mobilise to prevent nuclear weapons from again leading to war, and to impose abolition, i.e. the implementation by all parties concerned of the requirements of international law.
For example, they can sign the International Appeal for a Peaceful Solution to the Iran Crisis which is on the ACDN website, in French and in English.
Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement Nucléaire
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Réseau « Sortir du nucléaire »
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