Angelika Beer
MdEP

Greens support Kofi Annan's appeal: Nuclear test stop treaty must be ratified now!

22.09.2005

Commenting on the demand of UN SG Kofi Annan to ratify the nuclear test stop treaty (international conference at UN-headquarters in New York to celebrate this year's International Day of Peace), Angelika Beer, Member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defense (Green/EFA), states:

"We very much welcome this conference and in particular I welcome Secretary General Kofi Annan's call on the United States and 10 other key countries to urgently ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT). As long as the treaty is not ratified by all nuclear weapons states, all efforts to stop nuclear proliferation will fail.

In particular, we believe that such statement at this peace conference is vital after the failure of the NPT review conference earlier this year and the disappointing results of the UN-reform summit last week. This failure occured due in large part to the irresponsible attitude of the US administration and its refusal to accept the action programme on nuclear disarmament as a basis for negotiations, which had been adopted years ago at the previous review conference.

We appeal to the European Union to take the leadership for worldwide initiatives to push into effect the CTBT and to revive the NPT in accordance to the European Security Strategy (ESS)."

 

 

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