News: New NATO nuclear weapons doctrine threatens 'fragile' Non-Proliferation Treaty, warns Greenpeace 3 May 2000 NEW YORK -- A new NATO nuclear strategy paper proposed for adoption on May 9 would wreck negotiations at the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) talks in New York by expanding the role of nuclear weapons in NATO. Latest Greenpeace press release NPT Background Strengthening The Non-Proliferation Treaty Where Next? Ballistic Missile Defense: The threat of a new arms race NPT Article IV - Aiding Proliferation, Undermining Sustainability Greenpeace's Anti-nuclear Campaigns

The success or failure of the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference going on at UN Headquarters in New York will ultimately be measured not by the level of consensus achieved around text on paper, but by the extent to which it contributes to shoring up the increasingly fragile structure of international nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament and arms control measures. The fragile architecture of the NPT (which has been valued by the international community as an essential component of global stability) is perilously close to collapse. We cannot afford to put nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation "on ice" or leave repair of the NPT until the next Review Conference in 2005 - which the nations that possess nuclear weapons would obviously prefer.

On the contrary, the damage that could be done to the regime over the next few years will be irreversible and could include a new nuclear arms race, a scramble for ballistic missile defence systems, increased risk of regional nuclear war, the possible terrorist use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, the militarisation of outer space, and the modernisation of some of the nuclear arsenals of almost all the nuclear-weapon States.

The NPT has always being something of a highwire act, walking a tenuous political tightrope that tips uneasily between the Nuclear Weapon States' (NWS) inadequate steps to meet their Article VI obligations to disarmament and the majority of Non- Nuclear Weapon States' desire to stifle proliferation and achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

As we step into the new millennium, that balancing act is more difficult than ever. In too many ways, the situation now appears no more conducive to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation than during the Cold War. Along with the tensions created by the overt nuclearisation of India and Pakistan, the threat to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) posed by US missile defence plans, the paralysis in arms control negotiations at all levels and the failure to control horizontal proliferation, the most serious underlying problem is the lack of political leadership from any individual or government of the nuclear weapon states (NWS) on the issue of nuclear disarmament. This is particularly of concern in relation to the largest NWS, the United States.

The time is right, the need is urgent, for the US, Britain, France, China and Russia to present a programme of action which will rid the world of the thirty thousand plus nuclear weapons which still remain in the world. There is no shortage of ideas, there is merely a lack of political leadership.