XIVth World Congress
Paris, France
June 30-July 2, 2000
Statement to Press
Mary-Wynne Ashford, Co-President
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Paris, France
27 June 2000
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, represented here in Paris by more than 400 doctors and medical students from nearly 50 countries, have chosen to gather in this beautiful and historic city because we believe France has a pivotal role to play in reducing the risk of nuclear catastrophe now, and eliminating reliance on nuclear weapons completely in the shortest possible time.
As we gather here this morning, thousands of nuclear warheads remain on hair-trigger alert and tens of thousands more could be launched in hours. The US and Russia continue their policies of launch on warning and thus keep the world on the brink of catastrophe in the event of an accidental launch. Just one of these weapons is capable of slaughtering millions. And the explosion of just a few nuclear weapons anywhere in the world could have devastating and long-lasting effects on human societies and on the environment.
Our concern about nuclear weapons arises from our commitment as doctors to prevention of suffering and death, and from our responsibility to warn the public about threats to health.
Last month in New York City the world came to a crossroads in the journey toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. After a great deal of debate and political maneuvering, the 187 parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- including the nuclear weapon states -- chose the correct path. For the first time since the NPT was enacted in 1970, the nuclear weapon states, including France and the United States, committed themselves to "an unequivocal undertaking...to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals..."
This is the strongest political statement on abolition by the nuclear weapon states to date. But the parties to the NPT went even further. They agreed that "the total elimination of nuclear weapons is the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons." While no timetable was established for achieving the goal of nuclear weapons abolition, the nuclear weapon states, in our view, can no longer indefinitely defer their full compliance with Article VI of the NPT.
What the world now requires of the nuclear weapon states are deeds to match these words. It is no longer a question of whether to eliminate nuclear weapons, but when and how.
Dr. Gratchev, Dr. McCoy and I, on behalf of our entire Federation, stand with Dr. Behar and our French affiliate, L'Association des Médecins Pour la Prévention de la Guerre Nucléaire, in urging the French government to take a leadership role in bringing the world closer to nuclear abolition. In particular, we ask the government to stand as a role model to the other nuclear weapon states by taking prompt and definitive steps to fulfill the commitments made in New York -- and by demanding that the other nuclear weapon states do the same.
We are here this week to make some very specific recommendations in order to ensure that the beginning of the 21st century is not burdened with the nuclear threat that cast such a shadow over the last half of the 20th century.
First,
IPPNW calls on President Clinton and the US government to abandon its pursuit of a national missile defense -- a deeply flawed and ill considered program that threatens to unravel the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, halt all progress on present and future arms control negotiations, and undermine the breakthrough achievements of the NPT Review Conference just completed in New York. Worst of all, US insistence on building a national missile defense increases the risk of nuclear war and could initiate a new nuclear arms race among countries that would justifiably feel threatened by such a system. The US stands alone in stubbornly pursuing NMD over the objections of Russia and its own European allies. Indeed, Russia has threatened to withdraw from all existing nuclear arms control treaties if the US proceeds with deployment and has made its recent ratification of START II conditional on non-deployment. We are very pleased that France has spoken out against NMD, and we urge the government to persist in its opposition to this insidious new version of the long discredited "Star Wars" scheme at the coming G8 summit.
Second,
Recognizing the tragic effects on the health of workers and others who have been exposed to radiation and toxic hazards in the production and testing of nuclear weapons, and being aware of the environmental devastation that surrounds nuclear weapons facilities, IPPNW calls for the immediate cessation of all nuclear weapons development programs. Every aspect of nuclear weapons testing, development, and production inevitably exposes workers, civilians, and military personnel to unacceptable radiation and toxics hazards. Even without a nuclear explosion, the legacy of illness and death resulting from the decades of the nuclear arms race is serious and long lasting. We call it destruction before detonation.
Third,
IPPNW calls for rapid, substantial reductions in existing nuclear arsenals; for agreement among the nuclear weapon states on a timetable for reaching zero that is realistic but expeditious; for immediate steps to reduce the risk of accidental launch, including de-alerting; and for negotiation and implementation of a nuclear weapons convention. IPPNW has been advocating that the nuclear states should take a variety of mutually verifiable measures to take their nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
Finally,
We call here today for an independent international task force, under UN auspices, to undertake a two-part global research project designed, first, to evaluate and address the health and environmental legacy of nuclear weapons testing and production and, second, to identify and analyze key health and environmental issues that must be addressed in order to safely dismantle and dispose of the world's nuclear arsenals. This task force should be composed of physicians, epidemiologists, physicists, experts in radiation biology, toxicologists, and NGOs representing downwinders (including indigenous populations), nuclear facility workers, and the environmental community. Its investigations should include occupational exposures to nuclear weapons workers, exposures to civilian populations downwind and downstream of nuclear facilities, and residual contamination to ecosystems in and around all nuclear weapons facilities worldwide. The task force should recommend policies and strategies for health care and health monitoring of exposed individuals and populations, for compensation of sick nuclear workers and their families, and for environmental cleanup and remediation of contaminated sites.
The need for such a task force has been underscored by recent US government admissions that its own nuclear workers, over a period of several decades, have been exposed to excessive levels of low-level ionizing radiation and have contracted cancer and other related illnesses as a result of those exposures. IPPNW and its US affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility, have documented this problem for more than a decade in studies conducted by our own researchers, with only the most limited access to governmental health and environmental data. The problem in Russia, where health and safety measures were even less of a priority than in the US, is even more severe.
We urge the French government, which itself has resisted calls for transparency regarding the health and environmental impacts of its nuclear programs, to support the call for this international task force and to give it full access to the data it will require to conduct its work. Secrecy is the enemy of public health.
The lesson of the NPT Review Conference is that we have been correct in our claim that nuclear weapons abolition is a legitimate and achievable goal and that possession, use, and threatened use of nuclear weapons is, as the World Court has said, illegitimate and illegal under international law. The time has finally come to bring about prompt, dramatic reductions in nuclear arsenals, and, most importantly, to advance the complete elimination of nuclear weapons through negotiation and implementation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
Nuclear disarmament is not an ultimate goal, but a moral imperative. The promises made in New York by the nuclear weapons states give us renewed energy to wage a constant and energetic campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
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