{"id":55904,"date":"2015-03-23T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55904"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:55","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:55","slug":"non-proliferation-treaty-us-attempts-to-bully-allies-into-inaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/non-proliferation-treaty-us-attempts-to-bully-allies-into-inaction\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Proliferation Treaty: US Attempts to Bully Allies into Inaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mar 18, 2015 – <\/em>The Norwegian Under Secretary of State, B\u00e5rd Glad Pedersen, admitted on TV that Norway has been \u2018demarched<\/em>\u2018 by the United States to not sign the pledge to fill the legal gap on nuclear weapons launched by Austria at the conclusion of the Third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.<\/p>\n

This revelation follows a recent story<\/a> by Kyodo news exposing similar pressures directed towards Japan to prevent them from supporting the pledge. According to the Japanese newspaper, a U.S. State Department official admitted that Washington will not back the pledge, citing the need to pursue \u201ca more pragmatic approach that represents a consensus view<\/em>\u201d of the states parties to the NPT, demanding the same commitment from its allies.<\/p>\n

This is a curious statement, which implies that article VI of the NPT does not take a pragmatic approach to nuclear disarmament. The Austrian pledge is indeed a call to all states parties to the NPT to renew their commitment to the urgent and full implementation of existing obligations under Article VI, and to this end, identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Liv T\u00f8rres, General Secretary of Norwegian People\u2019s Aid, denounced this pressure on Norway as inappropriate. \u201cNorway launched an initiative whose main focus is disarmament, and it managed to transform the way we think about nuclear weapons. It is insolent that the US is now demanding that Norway withdraws from the initiative that it helped start.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government has also been criticized by the three opposition parties who recently put forward an initiative that demands that the Norwegian government support the pledge and carry on playing a key role in the process to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a clear sign that the nuclear weapon states are getting more and more nervous about the growing appetite for a prohibition of nuclear weapons. They did the same with the processes that led to the adoption of the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions,\u201d said Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN. \u201cIt\u2019s time for the non-nuclear weapon states to decide if nuclear weapons must be declared illegal and be put on the same footing of other weapons of mass destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n

To date, 55 states associated themselves with the pledge, considering it to be an opportunity to open a much-needed discussion on Article VI.<\/p>\n

While the US is pressuring its allies into inaction, it offers not serious alternative to implement the NPT\u2019s disarmament obligation.\u00a0 The so-called \u201cpragmatic\u201d approach seems not to carry any coherent vision for the future, while seeking to block any initiative that amounts to at concrete commitments on disarmament.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 icanw.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mar 18, 2015 – The Norwegian Under Secretary of State admitted that Norway has been \u2018demarched\u2019 by the USA to not sign the pledge to fill the legal gap on nuclear weapons. This revelation follows a recent story exposing similar pressures directed towards Japan to prevent them from supporting the pledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}