UN chief urges nuclear powers to cut arsenals

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world’s nuclear powers on Friday to start negotiations on eliminating nuclear weapons and begin talks to assure other nations they will not be attacked.

In a five-point plan to promote a world free of nuclear weapons, Ban also called for efforts to bring the nuclear test ban treaty into force, urged a halt to production of the fissile material needed for making atomic bombs and encouraged the nuclear powers to provide more information about their arsenals.

Ban went beyond nuclear weapons, calling for the elimination of biological and chemical weapons as well, and he urged new efforts to prevent terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction.

“As we progressively eliminate the world’s deadliest weapons and their components, we will make it harder to execute WMD terrorist attacks,” he said. “And if our efforts also manage to address the social, economic, cultural and political conditions that aggravate terrorist threats, so much the better.”

The secretary-general spoke at a one-day forum on the need to create a world free of nuclear weapons. He noted that the first resolution ever adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, in London in 1946, called for eliminating “weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

Noting that trillions of dollars are spent on the military and nuclear weapons, Ban said concerns over costs and the dangers of nuclear weapons “have led to a global outpouring of ideas to breathe new life into the cause of nuclear disarmament.”

Last year, former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senator Sam Nunn called on the United States to take the lead in nuclear disarmament. Kissinger chaired one of the sessions on Friday.

U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Friday it was time to move from resolution to action, a view echoed by many other participants.

“This is about action – about an action agenda, how we go from a lot of talking and passing resolutions to actually taking advantage of seizing the moment,” said John Mroz, founder and president of the EastWest Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan organization focusing on global threats which organized the event.

Snip

While its all well and good to natter on about ridding the world of nukes and other WMD, who can you trust?

Do we trust the Russians, the Chinese, or any of the other ‘usual suspects’?  Are they going to trust us?

For my part I only trust ‘me and thee’ and I’m starting to give a hard look at ‘thee’.

My other problem with this is the UN involvement in it.  Time after time the UN has shown itself to be in the corner of dictatorships, the Islamic moon-bats, terrorists, and the general no-goods of the world.  I don’t trust the UN as far as I could throw a ‘Blue Beret’ and I wouldn’t touch a ‘Blue Beret’ without wearing sanitary gloves.