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Appeal
for a nuclear-free zone in Europe
Ken Coates urges
you to sign this appeal
By Ken
Coates, TFF associate
At a meeting in the European Parliament on 11/12 May 2000
to consider the proposal for a European Conference on
Peace and Human Rights, the following appeal was
agreed.
After the war in Yugoslavia,
and the sidelining of the United Nations, there has been
a marked deterioration in international
relations.
This adverse development has
not been offset by gains in human rights, either in the
Balkans or further afield. To the contrary, ethnic
divisions have been intensified, crime and lawless
behaviour have increased, and people have fewer rights,
and less control over the course of their lives, than
ever before. At the same time, new threats have
widened.
In particular, the threat to
peace is now fearfully increased by nuclear doctrines of
first use. This long-held and dangerous commitment in the
USA and Nato has been matched by the Putin Doctrine in
Russia, ratified on 21st April 2000. Henceforward, the
Russian armed forces will deploy nuclear weapons in a
more active mode, "in response to large-scale aggression
involving conventional weapons in situations that are
critical for the national security of the Russian
Federation and its allies". Further dangers loom
following recent moves by the USA to deploy the so-called
"national missile defence" or "son of star wars", which
may well lead to nuclear weapons in space, and would
break the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile
Treaty.
Nuclear confrontation,
reviving the discredited idea of limited nuclear warfare,
will once again bring terror into international
relations, as a workaday part of the new international
order. In this context, democracy itself will be
threatened, and the very idea of security undermined. The
idea that human rights could be upheld by military
intervention was never very plausible. Nuclear
intervention is even more unthinkable.
Facing this dire prospect, we
invite other Europeans, peace organisations and human
rights proponents to come together to consider rational
alternatives which can sustain peace and human rights,
and to work for military disengagement and the annulment
of nuclear confrontation. We commend the idea of a
nuclear-free zone in Europe, as a step to global nuclear
disarmament.
I endorse the Russell Appeal for a European
Conference on Peace and Human Rights and a nuclear-free
zone in Europe.
Name………………………………..Organisation………………………………….
Address………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………….
e-mail……………………..fax………………………phone………………………..
Please return
to
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Russell House,
Bulwell Lane, Nottingham NG6 0BT, England
Phone
+44-115-9784 604 (work)
Derbyshire +44-1629-57159
Fax
+44-115-9420 433
Derbyshire +44-1629-427155
ELFEURO@compuserve.com
www.spokesmanbooks.com
(for The Spokesman journal)
©
Ken Coates 2000
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