Cuba Favors Elimination of All Nuclear Weapons

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Geneva.— Cuba said at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament that the only way to assure an effective disarmament is the total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, and urged for greater international collaboration to meet this purpose, reported EFE.

“Unless we follow this direction, it will be impossible to advance towards the ban of these weapons or the establishment of a guaranteed verification system,” said Cuban Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Jose Antonio Fernandez.

Fernandez called the Conference on Disarmament, gathering until March 30, “indispensable”, but warned that “it will not meet its goals unless there is genuine political will.”

He referred particularly “to those countries whose intransigence has put hurdles to meeting this objective in the past.”

Cuba’s position on nuclear disarmament is in tune with the conclusions made at the September 2006 Non-Aligned Movement Summit and signed by 118 heads of state or government.

http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_cuba/weapons013107.htm

:sarcasm:

in an entire year on "defense." Quite the difference there, isn't it?

...I guess I'm on board.

If nukes are banned, the world will be subject to blackmail if any country/group creates a nuke in that environment.

It's a bad world, and depending on someone to 'police' the development of nukes is pollyannaish, IMO.

What would the non-nuke states do if they found someone had violated or would soon violate the "ban?" They'd start up their own nuke problems based on just a rumor that another state had a nuke, IMO. There's no way to enforce a ban.

And if BushCrimeInc/Cheneyburton get their way..

Either we have an international agreement, backed by force of conventional arms, that no nation can have nukes, or we will have the current situation where 'the club' has them and almost everyone else who has the means is trying to get them.

The part of the Non Proliferation Treaty that our rulers don't ever talk about is the requirement for the nuclear nations to proceed toward total disarmanent, a path we abandoned even in spirit 1-20-2001.

but like many things that would be nice, I don't see that happening any time soon. Even if the US got rid of all its nukes, the problem will still exist...

As long as we know how to make, and have the ability to make, nuclear weapons, they ain't going anywhere.

Seriously, we DON'T need nukes. The idea that we need nukes to counter any other nation's nukes is rubbish. If another nation did attack us with a nuke, we have enough conventional firepower to pulverize that nation. We can't expect other nations to lay down their nuclear weapons as long as we insist on maintaining ours. We can't have two sets of rules - one for the rest of the world, and one for the United States.

If we don't have nukes, we will be subject to blackmail by states who do. As a poster wrote above - once the technology exists, you can't keep people/states/groups from using the technology just by "outlawing" that technology.

A nuke-free world will be a world at war within a decade, IMO.

applaud the sanity of Cuba

defensive posture--starting here in the land of the free, home of the brave. No more wars of choice! No more juntas, Bush or otherwise! No more "pre-emptive strikes"! No more illegal invasions! No more cancerous growth on the backs of the world's populations--nowhere more so than in the U.S.-- sucking the lifeblood out of economies and creating a standing invitation to fascists, dictators and bullies. No more Halliburtons! No more Blackwaters! No more war profiteering! No more soldiers used as cannon fodder for corporate resource wars! No more unnecessary death! No more oil and depleted uranium pollution of land and sea! No more cluster bombs and mines, to kill children!

"Jamais plus la guerre! Jamais plus la guerre!"*

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*(From Pope Paul VI's address to the United Nations in 1965--the most moving cry for peace I have ever heard.)