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| | | published Tuesday, April 06, 2010 | 4102 Views :: 0 Comments | |  |
Largest Peace Group: President Obama’s Nuclear Posture Not Quite
Straight
Washington, DC — In response to today’s released
Nuclear Posture Review by President Obama, Kevin Martin, executive
director of Peace Action — a group founded in 1957 to abolish nuclear
weapons and the largest grassroots peace organization — stated:
“President
Obama is the most engaged U.S. president ever on nuclear disarmament
issues, and Peace Action, like millions around the world, applauded his
Prague speech one year ago calling for a nuclear weapons-free world. We
are also encouraged by the New START agreement, to be signed in Prague
this Thursday, as a modest but necessary step toward further nuclear
arms cuts with Russia.
“However, the president's Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR), released today, appears to be too beholden to
outdated Cold War thinking, and it doesn't measure up to his vision of a
nuclear-free world. It's certainly better than the one released by the
Bush Administration, which called for the possibility of using nuclear
weapons on nonnuclear states. The Obama administration reversed that.
President Obama also stated the U.S. would not build new nuclear weapons
like those the previous administration wanted but Congress thankfully
blocked. Nonetheless, the document leaves room for the possibilities of
new warheads in the future.
“Besides this disappointing
NPR, the Administration has proposed a big increase in funding for the
U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and is considering a very bad nuclear
technology deal with Pakistan, thus rewarding one of the worst nuclear
weapons proliferators. This is in addition to a similarly bad deal with
India under the Bush administration.
“Luckily, the NPR is not
the last word on these or other nuclear weapons subjects. Congress, the
American people, and the international community all have a role to play
in advocating faster progress toward the global elimination of the
scourge of nuclear weapons. The upcoming Non Proliferation Treaty
Review conference in May will attract tens of thousands of people from
around the world to New York City demanding a safer world with no
nuclear weapons.”
The Nuclear Posture Review is a
congressionally mandated document that lays out nuclear weapon strategy
and purpose for the next five to ten years.
####
Founded
in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States'
largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid
members and nearly 100 chapters in 34 states, works to abolish nuclear
weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human
needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and
human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to the conflicts with
Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. The public may learn more and take action at
http://www.Peace-Action.org. For more up-to-date peace insider
information, follow Peace Action’s political director on Twitter.
http://twitter.com/PaulKawika
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