By IRNA,
London : The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has warned of the risks of another Hiroshima unless world powers get rid of their nuclear arsenals under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“While nuclear weapons are with us, there is always the possibility,” said CND chair Kate Hudson ahead of Wednesday’s 63rd anniversary of the US bombing of the Japanese island in which some 70,000 were killed as a result of initial blast.
The lingering radioactive fallout and other after effects are estimated to have put the death toll up to over 100,000 by the end of 1945 and is thought to have exceeded 200,000 in the first five years.
In an interview with IRNA, Hudson warned that the world was in a “particularly dangerous situation” due to changes in nuclear policy.
She referred specifically to the explicit statement by the US in 2002 about nuclear weapons becoming part of a usable arsenal.
“That is the greatest danger we’ve seen; this notion that nuclear weapons may be something which can be used perhaps in the battlefield, there has been talk of bunker busters and so on. I think that is the most dangerous thing,” she said.
CND is Europe’s oldest and biggest single-issue peace group, formed in London back in 1958 at the height of concern about the dangers of nuclear weapons. It has being constantly revived through new events and developments.
Hudson suggested that there was also the possibility of another Hiroshima-scale catastrophe caused by accident, a faulty system, a genuine human error or even weapons being fired when mistakenly believing being under attack.
“The climate change consequences of even a very small nuclear war in terms of changing the temperature of the planet, affecting areas where crops could be grown, water, etc. It is not possible to have a small limited nuclear war and governments must realize that,” she said.
The CND chair said that under the NPT, existing nuclear weapons countries must disarm, but that there had been little or
insufficient progress and the world must make them comply.
“We want our government to contribute internationally to create an environment where all nuclear weapons can be got rid of; not in any kind of biased or partial way but equally all nuclear weapons must be got rid of,” she said.
She believed that the complete implementation of the NPT was both feasible and achievable, saying there were already vast parts of the globe, mostly in the southern hemisphere covered by nuclear weapons free zones.
Hudson also argued of the need to bring state with illegal nuclear weapons, like Israel, Pakistan and India, under the NPT to disarm their arsenals.
“If you have the international community coming together in dealing with those issues and also powerful states in the UN putting the appropriate pressure on countries to participate in these kinds of agreements, then I believe that can be achieved,” she said.