October 1st, 2009
One welcome result of the discovery that Iran has been secretly building another uranium enrichment plant has been to refocus diplomacy more on demands for transparency, and less on the hitherto favored but largely ineffective demand that enrichment be suspended. Today’s talks in Geneva between Iran and the P5[i] plus Germany, hosted by the European […]
Read MoreSeptember 25th, 2009
The five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council are of course also the five nuclear weapon states that are recognized as such by the NPT. They have made few collective disarmament commitments, but there are some important ones and it is worth looking at the evolution of their collective disarmament language, up to […]
Read MoreSeptember 15th, 2009
September 24 promises a couple of encouraging firsts. It will be the first time a US President has chaired a session of the UN Security Council, and for the first time the Council is expected to pass a resolution that will include substantive disarmament elements relevant to the nuclear arsenals of its five permanent members […]
Read MoreSeptember 12th, 2009
“We call on all member States of the UN – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the UN Secretary-General in his five-point plan for nuclear disarmament.” This statement has at last count been signed by more than 300 Canadians named to the Order of Canada.[i]The […]
Read MoreSeptember 12th, 2009
The inimitable Barney Frank had it about right when he allowed that he “would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending.”[i] The Massachusetts Congressman’s wishful thinking came to mind when President Barak Obama […]
Read MoreSeptember 5th, 2009
“We call on all member States of the UN – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the UN Secretary-General in his five-point plan for nuclear disarmament.” This statement has at last count been signed by more than 300 Canadians named to the Order of Canada.[i]The […]
Read MoreAugust 31st, 2009
The entry into force on July 15 of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Pelindaba, was largely ignored by the world’s mainstream news media.[i]That’s too bad. It is a significant development and a further nudge toward a world without nuclear weapons. It was South Africa’s historic decision to destroy its […]
Read MoreAugust 16th, 2009
An American energy industry journalist anticipates a Canada-India nuclear cooperation deal — an umbrella agreement to govern a variety of trade, research, and development arrangements — will be signed in time for the 2010 G8 meeting in Canada. It is a deal, says the report, which is unlikely to address the kinds of nonproliferation concerns put forward by DisarmingConflict and other nonproliferation experts.. […]
Read MoreAugust 13th, 2009
For the first time in fully a dozen years, the UN’s disarmament forum agreed last May to a program of substantive work, but in early August it has run into another obstruction. The 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) has become best known for being stalemated for more than a decade, unable to go beyond […]
Read MoreAugust 5th, 2009
Canada had more than a front row seat at the dawn of the nuclear age. As part of the Manhattan Project this country was a player in the bombings that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago, providing both uranium and extensive scientific support for the first nuclear weapons.[i] Yet, right after World War II, […]
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