Subject: Conference urges Canada to press policies against nuclear weapons

Background:

NATO's policy is that nuclear weapons are "essential".

NATO is prepared to be the first to use nuclear weapons if
conventional weapons are inadequate to achieve a military
objective. This is explicit NATO policy.

But it sends a terrible message to the rest of the world -- if
nukes are essential for NATO, why shouldn't they be essential
for every country in the world? If NATO is prepared to use
nukes when conventional weapons fail, why shouldn't
everyone else adopt exactly the same policy on the same
grounds?

Canadians must put pressure on our government to challenge
the NATO doctrine on nuclear weapons. Now that there is a
president in the White House who is advocating a world
without nuclear weapons, the Canadian government can even
win brownie points with the White House by asking NATO to
re-examine and revise its policy on nukes.

The abolition of nuclear weapons is essential if we are to have
a sustainable future for our grandchildren.

Gordon Edwards.

http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/canada/article/434754--conference-urges-c...

Conference urges Canada to press
policies against nuclear weapons

THE CANADIAN PRESS, 27 January 2010

OTTAWA - Activists are urging the Canadian government to play a bigger
role in the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Anti-nuclear groups including Project Ploughshares and the Canadian
Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons want Prime Minister Stephen Harper
to speak out on disarmament.

They say Canada should press NATO to review its nuclear strategies and
urge the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.

They also say the government should encourage the involvement of civil
society in the nuclear debate by sending NGO delegates to a conference
later this year which will review the non-proliferation treaty.

The activists held a two-day conference in Ottawa this week to set out
a Canadian agenda on disarmament.

Doug Roche, former MP, senator and one-time Canadian ambassador for
disarmament, says the world has a clear opportunity for progress since
President Barack Obama has committed himself to disarmament.

In Prague last year, Obama said nuclear disarmament can be achieved,
although it will take years and may not arrive in his lifetime.

Roche said Wednesday the conference recommendations recognize the
importance of the president's move.

"Those recommendations centre on the need for Prime Minister Harper to
find early opportunities to speak out on behalf of the support that
President Obama needs and also to give support to those calls that are
now being made for a new global treaty to ban nuclear weapons," Roche
said.

He said there are 23,000 nuclear weapons around the world, with the
power of 150,000 Hiroshima bombs.

To use them, he said, would be immoral and illegal,
so why not get rid of them?