A Quote by Hans Blix
For some twenty years the window that opened at the end of the Cold War has been allowed to hang flapping in the wind. It is high time that the five nuclear-weapon states take seriously their commitment to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.
Related Quotes
The five original nuclear weapon states I mentioned - U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia - under the NPT have committed to the achievement of the elimination of their nuclear arsenals through good faith negotiations of nuclear disarmament - that's Article Six of the treaty.
We have been led to believe that we have come a long way toward world nuclear disarmament. But that is not the case. Our government is not doing all that it could. We must urge our leaders to fulfill the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States must assume world leadership to end once and for all the threat of nuclear war. It is our moral responsibility.
Let me remind you that nuclear disarmament is not just an ardent desire of the people, as expressed in many resolutions of the United Nations. It is a legal commitment by the five official nuclear states, entered into when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security.
I believe in a reasonable amount of "right to bear arms". But private citizens of the United States are not allowed to own nuclear weapons. I always wanted a nuclear weapon, if I could have gotten one. I'm every other kind of power, but I'm not a nuclear power.
It is time for the rest of the world to join ... in demanding that ALL the nuclear weapons states -including Israel, India and Pakistan, but above all the US and Russia - negotiate concrete steps on a definite time-table toward the global, inspected abolition of nuclear weapons.
Since the end of the Cold War two main nuclear powers have begun to make big reductions in their nuclear arsenals. Each of them is dismantling about 2,000 nuclear warheads a year.
But elimination will only happen if all countries - nuclear and non-nuclear states - genuinely work towards this result. Nuclear states must abolish their arsenals, as was indicated by the unanimous opinion of the international Court of Justice, the highest international tribunal. The five nuclear states seem to expect others to refrain from obtaining bombs while at the same time maintaining their own caches of deadly weapons.
It is a measure of the arrogance of nations - but especially of the nuclear-weapon states - to assert that a nuclear-weapons-free world is impossible when, in fact, ninety-five percent of the nations of the world already are nuclear free.
In many places around the world, all over the U.S. and Europe there are active nuclear power plants. And for many years during the Cold War the threat of nuclear war was a permanent fear. There's always the concern that human kind is biting off more than they can chew in harnessing nuclear power.
If Iran becomes a nuclear weapon state it is the end of non-proliferation as we know it. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon you are likely to see Saudi, Egypt and other countries follow suit and we will bequeath to the next generation a nuclear arms race in the world's most unstable region.
The fact that lately some circles, not less powerful by their small size, have been actively promoting certain theories, as dangerous as they are illusory, of a "limited", "winnable" or "protracted" nuclear war, as well as their obsession of "nuclear superiority", make it advisable to bear always in mind that the immediate goal of all States, as was expressly declared in the Final Document of the Special Assembly of 1978, "is that of the elimination of the danger of a nuclear war"
As a nuclear power - as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon - the United States has a moral responsibility to act.
We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums.
In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims. The truth of peace requires that all ... strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament.
All nuclear weapon states should now recognize that this is so, and declare - in Treaty form - that they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. This would open the way to the gradual, mutual reduction of nuclear arsenals, down to zero.
Related Authors
Alva Myrdal Quotes
Swedish
Diplomat
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Quotes
French
Diplomat
Dag Hammarskjold Quotes
Swedish
Diplomat
Daniel Fried Quotes
American
Diplomat
Greig Fraser Quotes
Australian
Diplomat
James Bryce Quotes
English
Diplomat
Jean Kennedy Smith Quotes
American
Diplomat
Jeane Kirkpatrick Quotes
American
Diplomat
Joseph de Maistre Quotes
French
Diplomat
Lawrence Eagleburger Quotes
American
Diplomat
Madeleine M. Kunin Quotes
American
Diplomat
Miroslav Lajcak Quotes
Slovak
Diplomat
Nizar Qabbani Quotes
Syrian
Diplomat
Richard Grenell Quotes
American
Diplomat
Richard N. Haass Quotes
American
Diplomat
Sergei Lavrov Quotes
Russian
Diplomat