15 April 2010
Dear Reaching Critical Will friends and advisors:
This will be the last edition of the E-News until after the NPT Review Conference, as Reaching Critical Will will be busy preparing for and engaging in the Review Conference. Please take note of all the NPT-related information provided in this E-News, including very important information on attending official meetings of the Review Conference and registering for the Conference.
During the Review Conference, you can follow of the action by subscribing to Reaching Critical Will’s daily newsletter, the NPT News in Review. Full of detailed information about the official meetings, reports on side events, feature articles, artwork, advertisements, puzzles, and a daily calendar of events, the NPT News in Review is one-stop-shop for NPT news and activities. Also remember to check out the Reaching Critical Will website regularly, as our team will be posting all statements, working papers, and other documents as soon as we get them.
In peace,
Ray Acheson, Project Director
1) Important information about attending the NPT Review Conference
Attending events. Due to major renovations of the UN Headquarters, there are a very limited number of seats in the conference rooms for delegates and NGO participants. The first three days, the plenary meetings will take place in the General Assembly Hall. There should be plenty of seating in the galleries. However, the NGO Room (Conference Room A in the North Lawn Building) has a maximum capacity of 75 people and Conference Rooms 4 and 2 of the North Lawn Building, where other official meetings will be held, have very limited seating as well.
Due to these restrictions, please make sure that your organization appoints one person to attend each meeting. It does not have to be the same person at every meeting, but please make sure that no more than one person is representing your organization at each meeting. This way, everyone will have a chance to monitor and participate in events at the Review Conference.
In addition, please do not linger in the UN buildings if you are not attending a specific event. UN security will be very tight this year and will be asking people to leave the buildings if they get crowded. There are nearby coffeshops and parks to continue your discussions.
NGO Room. The NGO Room, Conference Room A of the North Lawn Building, will open at 9:00 AM with RCW’s government briefings each morning (there is no briefing the first morning). The room will not be open before 9:00 AM. The room will close at 6:00 PM. Please do not linger after the last event—UN Security will be ushering people out of the building after 6:00 PM. There will be a table for NGO materials in the NGO Room. Please keep this table neat and share with others. Do not put out all of your materials at once—please put out a few at a time so that there is space for others as well. Please do not put up posters in the NGO Room. You may display visuals during your event but please make sure you remove them as soon as your event is over.
Equipment in the NGO Room. The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs has very graciously lent NGOs a projector for use in the NGO Room for the duration of the conference. Please thank UNODA staff when you see them! And please be very careful with this equipment. The cost of any damage will be covered by the NGO(s) responsible. The RCW team will set up and take down this projector each morning and evening. Please do not remove the projector from the NGO Room or tamper with it any way. If you are experiencing technical difficulties, please alert someone from the RCW team. The projector is a Proxima Ultralight DX2. A portable screen will be available in the NGO Room at all times to be set up by the NGOs wishing to use it.
There is also a photocopier in the NGO Room strictly for the use of civil society. If the stock of paper runs out, please ask someone from the RCW team to retrieve more paper. Please use the photocopier sensibly—remember that there are well over 100 NGOs accredited to this Conference and we must share the equipment and paper. Please do not disturb events by photocopying during films or while people are speaking on panels. Use the time between events to use the photocopier.
Registration. All NGOs that have been provisionally approved for accreditation to the Review Conference will have received information on how to pre-register for the Conference. Pre-registering online is mandatory. The head of each organization will have been given a password and instructions—please fill out each registration form COMPLETELY to save time during actual registration. Information will be entered manually if it is not filled out ahead of time, which will make really long lines even longer. Please be courteous to everyone by filling out your registration form in full online.
To register, please bring your registration confirmation letter, your printed registration form, and government issued photo ID to any of the following times and locations:
Sunday, 2 May 2010: 10:00 AM–2:00 PM, UN Pass and Identification Office, corner of First Avenue and 45th Street
Monday, 3 May 2010: 8:00 AM–4:00 PM, lobby of the General Assembly Hall
Tuesday, 4 May–Thursday, 6 May: 9:00 AM–4:00 PM, lobby of the General Assembly Hall
Friday, 7 May: 9:00 AM–12:00 PM, lobby of the General Assembly Hall
If you arrive after 7 May, you must contact Ms. Soo-Hyun Kim, E-mail: [email protected] or Ms. Junko Hirakawa, E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +1 (212) 963-3031 to arrange for issuance of a security identification badge at the Pass and Identification Office.
2) Pre-NPT activities: conference, rally, march, and festival
International Conference for a Nuclear Free, Peaceful, Just, and Sustainable World
30 April–1 May 2010
Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027
NGO’s from around the world are organizing a day and a half long international conference on Nuclear Abolition, Peace and Disarmament on May 1, 2010, the eve of the NPT Review Conference at the United Nations. The conference will be held in the Riverside Church in New York City and will include between 800 and 1,000 participants.
The conference will provide a forum to share analyses, to coordinate activities during the month-long Review Conference, and to better integrate campaigns for nuclear weapons abolition, peace, economic justice and human needs and environmental sustainability.
The conference will consist of three plenaries and numerous workshops. Plenary and workshop speakers will include leading experts on the issues addressed by the conference. Workshops are being organized internationally along four tracks: abolition, peace, economic justice/human needs, and environmental sustainability
List of Speakers
Workshops
Getting There
– Directions & Parking information
Registration Form
- General registration is now open!
International Day of Action
Sunday, 2 May 2010
New York City
1:30 PM › Assembly (7th Ave, South of 41st St)
2:00–3:30 PM › Rally
3:30 PM › March across 42nd Street to the United Nations
4:00–6:00 PM › International Peace & Music Festival in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
Rally and March
International Peace & Music Festival in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
– 47th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves.
Interfaith Convocation
– Coming Soon
What You Need to Know
– Rally assembly, buses, directions, housing, contingents
The day will begin at 2:00 PM with a dynamic rally of speakers and performers and greetings from the international delegations. At 3:30, we will have a spirited march across town to the United Nations ending with the International Peace & Music Festival where there will be music from around the world as well as tents and tables that will provide information and organizing resources so that we can continue our work for a safe, nuclear-free, peaceful and just world for all!
What You Can Do:
Help us spread the word! Download Fliers Here.
Sign up to volunteer
Organizing a bus or peace train? Click here
Registration for Tables at the Peace Festival
3) Contribute to the NPT News in Review?
The NPT News in Review is a daily publication produced during NPT Preparatory Committee and Review Conferences. It features analysis of the day’s events, feature articles from NGOs around the world, interviews with diplomats and NGO representatives, nuclear facts, announcements, cartoons, a calendar of events, and more. You can access archived NIRs online and subscribe to receive in your inbox.
We also encourage you to submit to the 2010 NPT News in Review.
The guidelines are as follows:
Feature articles: In addition to the daily analysis of the proceedings of the RevCon, the NPT News in Review also contains feature articles that cover a range of nuclear disarmament issues. We welcome submissions from NGO experts around the world, regardless of whether or not you will be in Geneva. Articles should be between 400-800 words. Please submit in .doc format and the body of the email. Articles will be attributed to the author and may be edited for length.
Advertising space: You can use the NPT News in Review to publicize an important announcement, event, or project hosted by your organization. NIRs are hand-distributed to all of the delegates at the Review Conference, sent out to our email subscription list, and are archived on our website.
1/4 page ad: $40
1/2 page ad: $60
full page ad: $130
back page ad: $185
(Run your ad twice and get $5 off. Run your add three times and get $10 off. Run your ad four times and get $15 off.)
Cartoons, photos, artwork, poetry: The NPT News in Review wouldn’t be complete without its fill of poignant, satirical, and beautiful artwork. We are accepting all forms of anti-nuclear artwork, to be sent in either a .jpg, .gif, or .pdf file. Photos, paintings, doodles, cartoons, collage, mixed media, and drawings are all welcome.
Submit your ad, article, or artwork by sending to [email protected]" style="color: rgb(142, 95, 189); text-decoration: none; ">ray[at]reachingcriticalwill.org:
your organization’s name;
contact person;
email address;
phone number;
type of submission (for ads, please specify the size of the ad, dates for it to run, and payment method); and
the submission
Please send your articles, advertisements, or artwork as soon as possible! Submissions will be accepted until the end of the Review Conference, but the earlier you get it to us the better, so that we can plan our editions in advance as much as possible.
4) Thematic debate on disarmament at the United Nations
The UN is holding a thematic debate on Disarmament and World Security: Challenges for the International Community and the Role of the United Nations on 19 April 2010, from 10:00–18:00. You must have a UN grounds pass to attend.
l0h00 — Opening Session
• H.E. Ali Abdussalan Treki, President of the 64th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations
• H.E. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations
10h15-13h00 — Session 1: Strengthening Multilateral Commitments regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction: the challenges and opportunities of disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy
• Ambassador Rolf Ekéus, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
• Ambassador Mohamed I Shaker, Chairman of the Egyptian Council of Foreign Affairs
• Ms. Joan Rohlfing, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative
• Ambassador Abdul Samad Minty, Department of International Relations and Cooperation of the Republic of South Africa
Moderator: Ambassador Mona Juul (Norway), Former Chair of the First Committee Disarmament and International Security Committee
15h00-17h45 — Session 2: Enhancing security through the regulation of arms: security needs, military expenditures, the arms trade and arms availability
• Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
and Former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs
• Ambassador Camilo Reyes Rodrígues, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia and former
Chair of the 2001 United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects
• Dr. Keith Krause, Small Arms Survey Project and Professor at the Graduate Institute of Development
and International Studies
• Dr. Christiane Agboton-Johnson, Deputy Director, United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
Moderator: Ambassador José Luis Cancela (Uruguay), Chair of the First Committee Disarmament and International Security Committee
17h45-18h00 — Closing remarks
5) Update on the pursuit of a nuclear weapons convention
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has put together a four-page Global Update document for April showcasing worldwide efforts to strengthen political support for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. The campaign is calling on governments to agree at the NPT Review Conference next month to begin negotiations or preparatory work on a convention, backed by a strong system of verification. The Global Update looks at public opinion, the UN Secretary-General’s five-point plan on disarmament and lobbying efforts in 30 countries. It has been distributed to all government missions in New York, and will be available to NGOs at the Review Conference. You can download the document at http://www.icanw.org/files/Update-April.pdf
6) Nuclear Abolition Day: 5 June 2010
On 5 June—the Saturday after the end of the NPT Review Conference— organizations across the world will hold local events to markNuclear Abolition Day. The purpose of the day is to make global call for negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention to get underway, regardless of the outcome of the Review Conference. Some groups are planning large demonstrations, while others are planning smaller vigils, media stunts and forums.
If you would like to hold an event to mark Nuclear Abolition Day, please contact Tim Wright from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ([email protected]" style="color: rgb(142, 95, 189); text-decoration: none; ">tim[at]icanw.org). ICAN will be launching a website at the beginning of April and would like to have as many events listed from the outset as possible. If you don’t know the details yet, that’s fine—simply a commitment to hold an event, along with a contact email address, is all they need for now. Details about the day are in ICAN’s Global Action Agenda.
7) Featured News European Day of Action Against Nuclear Weapons
Saturday, April 3 was the European Day of Action Against Nuclear Weapons. Protesters gathered at nuclear-military bases around in Europe to call for nuclear abolition and to denounce their governments’ policies. The support for this day was wide spread. Demonstrations were held in Italy, Turkey, Holland, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Belgium. In Belgium, about 1000 people participated in non-violent actions in Kleine Brogel, where the US is believed to have nuclear weapons. Musical performances took place, people read poems, and a 30 minutes silence was held for all the victims of nuclear weapons throughout the past as well as future ones.
The political will to abolish nuclear weapons within NATO is growing. Top politicians in Belgium are pleading for a nuclear free Europe, but so far no action has been taken. Nuclear weapons can not be used without breaking international law. The protesters in Kleine Brogel demanded that the Belgium government take responsibility and reject the NATO nuclear strategy. Hundreds of protesters peacefully trespassed on the military air base. About 400 were detained by the military and the police. The Belgian minister of defence expressed that he was tired of these actions. But the only way stop these events is to change the illegal nuclear policy and eliminate nuclear weapons. The campaign is a non-violent attempt to make sure that the international law is applied. These action were only the beginning of a series events that will take place until the start of the NPT Review Conference in May. Source: www.bombspotting.org
US nuclear posture review released On Tuesday, 6 April, US President Obama unveiled the government’s new nuclear posture review. The following is a very brief overview of some of the key points of the posture. Role of nuclear weapons.
John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy notes: “the longstanding elements of US doctrine remain in place: the United States may use nuclear weapons, preemptively or responsively, in relation to both nuclear and non-nuclear (conventional, chemical, biological) capabilities and attacks by other states possessing nuclear weapons, or states deemed not to be in compliance with the NPT. In this regard, the NPR is fundamentally deficient in its treatment – or rather ignoring – of law. It is inescapable that the use of nuclear weapons, with their uncontrollable collateral effects, is incompatible with requirements of necessity, proportionality, and discrimination. Yet despite the fact that the US military accepts and applies these rules in its conventional military operations, they receive no mention in the NPR.”
Modernization of nuclear weapons. The new NPR states the US “will not develop new nuclear warheads. Life Extension Programs will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.”
Ivan Oelrich from the Federation of American Scientists points out that warheads “will be maintained by Life Extension Programs, with a strong preference for refurbishment and some replacement but each warhead will be considered on a case-by-case basis and some nuclear components could be replaced with components from different warheads not necessarily in the current stockpile. By my definition, that would be a ‘new’ warhead but not by the NPR definition. The only restriction is that nuclear components would have to have to be based on tested components but that would not, I believe, disqualify the recent Livermore Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) design.”
Elimination of nuclear weapons. The new NPR:
- states that the "long-term goal of U.S. policy is the complete elimination of nuclear weapons";
- identifies this objective to be pursued after entry into force of the New START agreement signed April 8, 2010 and "substantial further nuclear force reductions with Russia": "engage other states possessing nuclear weapons, over time, in a multilateral effort to limit, reduce, and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide"; and
- decides upon this step: "Initiate a comprehensive national research and development program to support continued progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons, including expanded work on verification technologies."
Dr. Burroughs argues that while the NPR contends that “reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons” will demonstrate “that we are meeting our NPT Article VI obligation to make progress toward nuclear disarmament,” the United States is in fact “obligated to go beyond the measures outlined in the NPR to support and actively work toward the commencement and conclusion of negotiations on a convention for the global elimination of nuclear weapons.” He notes that the NPR actually conveys the opposite intention, “projecting reliance on nuclear forces as central instruments of national security strategy for decades to come.”
Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group argues that overall, “Viewed from a certain remove, this NPR broadly hints at a geopolitical vision, a kind of ‘world management strategy’ based on enhancing strategic nuclear stability with respect to Russia and China as peer competitors and the maintenance and enhancement of flexible regional nuclear “umbrellas” to help manage U.S. alliances and keep down regional adversaries and competitors. Nuclear proliferation is elevated as the greatest threat to the U.S. and its critical interests in this strategy. This NPR supports the notion that the possibility of proliferation is the greatest justification we have for strong military and economic intervention – the application of ‘hard’ power – globally.”
You can read the new Nuclear Posture Review in full and read the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Federation of American Scientists, and Los Alamos Study Group ’s complete analyses on their websites.
US and Russia sign new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
On 8 April, Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the new START.
Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists notes that while the new treaty “reduces the legal limit for deployed strategic warheads, it doesn’t actually reduce the number of warheads. Indeed, the treaty does not require destruction of a single nuclear warhead and actually permits the United States and Russia to deploy almost the same number of strategic warheads that were permitted by the 2002 Moscow Treaty.” Specifically, Kristensen points out:
The White House fact sheet states that the new limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads is 74% lower than the 6,000 warhead limit of the 1991 START Treaty, and 30% lower than the 2,200 deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.
That is correct, but the limit allowed by the treaty is not the actual number of warheads that can be deployed. The reason for this paradox is a new counting rule that attributes one weapon to each bomber rather than the actual number of weapons assigned to them. This “fake” counting rule frees up a large pool of warhead spaces under the treaty limit that enable each country to deploy many more warheads than would otherwise be the case. And because there are no sub-limits for how warheads can be distributed on each of the three legs in the Triad, the “saved warheads” from the “fake” bomber count can be used to deploy more warheads on fast ballistic missiles than otherwise.
For more of Kristensen’s analysis on the new START, see his blog piece Unfortunately, as Ivan Oelrich, also of FAS, argues, “The treaty does not even approach territory that would call for a fundamental rethinking of how we deploy our nuclear weapons. As the military would say, the treaty protects the force structure [emphasis added].”
Furthermore, ratification of the new START will only be obtained—if at all—in exchange for massive investment in the US nuclear weapon complex, “protecting the force structure” well into the future. The price of ratification will be the opposite of disarmament.
Plans for prompt global strike continue
While the government signed START and released the nuclear posture review, the Pentagon continued with developments of its prompt global strike system, which include intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with conventional weapons. Deployment of a conventional ballistic missile is not expected until 2015 at the earliest. But the program has received a recent boost from the Obama administration, which sees the missiles as one cog in an array of weapons that could ultimately replace nuclear arms. The administration has asked Congress for $240 million for next year’s Prompt Global Strike development programs, a 45 percent increase from the current budget. The military forecasts a total of $2 billion in development costs through 2015. The Air Force is scheduled to perform an initial flight test of a prototype next month. Other countries are not impressed. “World states will hardly accept a situation in which nuclear weapons disappear, but weapons that are no less destabilizing emerge in the hands of certain members of the international community,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Furthermore, there is a great risk that a launch of a conventional-armed missile would be mistaken for the launch of a nuclear-armed missile. Source: Craig Whitlock, “
U.S. looks to nonnuclear weapons to use as deterrent
” The Washington Post, 8 April 2010.
US nuclear security summit: flexing the nuclear muscles
In an interview ahead of the US nuclear security summit, US Secretary of State Clinton gave an interview in which she reminded the world, “We’ll be, you know, stronger than anybody in the world, as we always have been, with more nuclear weapons than are needed many times over.” She and Defense Secretary Gates also emphasized that the US would spend $5 billion this year modernizing its existing nuclear weapons. Ironically, Secretary Gates, commenting on the Iranian situation, said, “What has to happen is the Iranian government has to decide that its own security is better served by not having nuclear weapons than by having them.” Source: Eli Saslow, “
Top officials stress country’s nuclear strength
” The Washington Post, 12 April 2010.
Bangladeshi parliament supports a nuclear weapons convention
On Monday, 5 April, Bangladeshi parliament adopted a unanimous resolution giving full support to the UN Secretary-General’s five point proposal for nuclear disarmament and the nuclear weapons convention. Monday’s resolution also called on the UN Conference on Disarmament to immediately begin negotiations on nuclear disarmament, and declared, “any use of nuclear weapons would constitute international crimes, including crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, war crimes and genocide, with catastrophic global effects.” It also stressed that the annual $100 billion spent on nuclear weapons should be diverted to climate change adaptation programmes and millennium development goals. Source: “
JS passes resolution in support of Nuclear Weapons Convention
,”bdnews24.com, 5 April 2010.
8) Recommended Reading
Avner Cohen, “
We look at Iran and see ourselves
,” Haaretz.com, 4 April 2010.
Dr. Edna Gorney and Hedva Eyal, On Nuclear Weapons: A Feminist Perspective, Isha L’Isha—Haifa Feminist Center, 2009
Hans Blix, “
A Season for Disarmament
,” New York Times, 4 April 2010.
Tad Daley, “
All Options, Still, on the Table
,” AntiWar.com, 9 April 2010.
Russ Wellen, “
Do the New START and NPR Just Provide Cover for the Nuclear Establishment?
” The Faster Times, 11 April 2010.