United States and Allies
Protest U.N. Talks to Ban Nuclear Weapons
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and RICK GLADSTONE MARCH 27, 2017
Nikki Haley, the United States
ambassador to the United Nations, spoke on Monday outside the nuclear weapons
ban talks, flanked by Alexis Lamek, left, France’s deputy United Nations
ambassador, and Matthew Rycroft, right, the British ambassador to the United
Nations. CreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images
UNITED NATIONS — Saying the time was not right
to outlaw nuclear arms, the United States led a group of dozens of United
Nations members on Monday that boycotted talks at the global
organization for a treaty that would ban the weapons.
“There is nothing I want more for my family than
a world with no nuclear
weapons,” Ambassador Nikki R. Haley of the United States told
reporters outside the General Assembly as the talks began. “But we have to be
realistic. Is there anyone who thinks that North Korea would ban nuclear
weapons?”
Ms. Haley and other ambassadors standing with
her, including envoys from Albania, Britain, France and South Korea, declined
to take questions.
The talks, supported by more than 120 countries,
were first announced in October and are led by Austria, Brazil, Ireland,
Mexico, South Africa and Sweden. Disarmament groups strongly support the
effort.
The United States and most other nuclear powers,
including Russia, oppose the talks. The Obama administration voted against
convening them.
The talks come against the backdrop of
increasing worries over the intentions of a reclusive North Korea, which has tested nuclear weapons and missiles that
could conceivably carry them. Defying international sanctions, the North
Koreans have threatened to strike the United States and its allies with what
North Korea’s state news media has called the “nuclear sword of justice.”
Ms. Haley and Ambassador Matthew Rycroft of
Britain emphasized that their countries had vastly reduced the size of their
nuclear arsenals since the height of the Cold War.
Mr. Rycroft said his country was not
participating in the talks “because we do not believe that those negotiations
will lead to effective progress on global nuclear disarmament.”
Ms. Haley questioned whether countries favoring
a weapons ban understood the nature of global threats. Referring to nations
participating in the talks, she said, “You have to ask yourself, are they
looking out for their people?”
She cited North Korea and Iran in articulating
her opposition to the talks. But those countries have taken divergent
positions. North Korea, like the United States and its allies, is sitting out
the talks. Iran, which does not have nuclear weapons and has promised not to
acquire them, is participating.
“Is it any surprise that Iran is in support of
this?” Ms. Haley said.
Her counterparts from Russia and China, both
veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, did not join her
protest group. But they are not participating in the talks.
Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia said
in Moscow last week that his government did not support a global nuclear
weapons ban, essentially agreeing with the American position.
“Efforts to coerce nuclear powers to abandon
nuclear weapons have intensified significantly recently,” the Tass news
agency quoted
him as saying. “It is absolutely clear that the time has not yet
come for that.”
Proponents of a nuclear weapons ban have
acknowledged the challenges of reaching a treaty, but have been encouraged by
efforts that led to landmark prohibitions on other weapons, including chemical
weapons, land mines and cluster
munitions.
If a sufficient number of countries were to
ratify a nuclear weapons ban, supporters contend, it would create political and
moral pressure on holdouts, including the big nuclear powers.
Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of
the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said in a statement that the
opposition expressed by Ms. Haley and her allies “demonstrates how worried they
are about the real impact of the nuclear ban treaty.”
Ms. Fihn, whose organization is a strong
supporter of the negotiations, said a treaty would “make it clear that the
world has moved beyond these morally unacceptable weapons of the past.”
Humanitarian aid groups not directly engaged in
disarmament causes also endorsed the talks.
“Of course, adopting a treaty to prohibit
nuclear weapons will not make them immediately disappear,” Peter Maurer, the
president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement. “But it will reinforce the stigma
against their use, support commitments to nuclear risk reduction and be a
disincentive for proliferation.”
As the talks began inside the General Assembly
hall, Toshiki Fujimori, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, made an
emotional appeal to diplomats.
“I’m here at the U.N. asking for an abolition of
nuclear weapons,” he said through an interpreter. “Nobody in any country
deserves seeing the same hell again.”
More than 2,000 scientists signed an open
letter endorsing the talks.
“We scientists bear a special responsibility for
nuclear weapons, since it was scientists who invented them and discovered that
their effects are even more horrific than first thought,” stated the letter,
posted on the website of the Future of Life Institute, a charitable
organization that promotes the peaceful use of technology.
Quoting President Ronald Reagan, the letter
stated, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
A version of this article appears
in print on March 28, 2017, on Page A10 of the New York edition with
the headline: United States and Allies Boycott U.N. Talks for a Treaty to Ban
Nuclear Weapons.
C 2015 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment