Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By HAIDER RIZVI

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - As U.N.-led talks on disarmament resumed in Geneva on July 30, calls were growing for nuclear-armed nations to cut spending on their stockpiles and instead divert resources to development.

“The amount still being spent on nuclear arms makes no sense, just as continued reliance on the weapons themselves makes no sense,” David Kreiger, president of the U.S.-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told IPS.

His remarks alluded to the fact that nine out of 193 U.N. member states continue to increase budgetary allocations for the maintenance and modernisation of nuclear weapons, despite promises to reduce their stockpiles. [P] ARABIC | GERMAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION | PORTUGUESE |  SPANISH

Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By JULIO GODOY

PARIS (IPS) - The changing international political order and a dramatic budgetary situation at home are forcing France to consider giving up the extremely expensive nuclear arsenal the country has maintained since the late 1950s.

To make this pressing necessity appear as a virtue, some French political leaders and analysts are attempting to posit the move as a step towards international efforts to update the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce global nuclear arsenals. [P] ARABIC | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION

Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By JASMIN RAMSEY*

WASHINGTON (IPS) - The one agreement that talks between Iran and the P5+1 – the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany – produced after a “technical meeting” in Istanbul was a decision to schedule more talks.

But even while the United States and Iran engage in threatening behaviour, Iran-focused experts say that continuing meetings is the first step to advancing the diplomatic process. [P] JAPANESE TEXT VERSION

Nuclear Abolition NewsEssay | Arms Control Association

By SIDNEY D. DRELL and JAMES E. GOODBY*

Less than a year after the first atomic bombings, Albert Einstein warned, “Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Despite Einstein’s warning, this drift continued over the next four decades, prior to the Reykjavik summit in October 1986.

Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By ISABELLE DE GRAVE

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - Reducing the risks associated with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats is the goal of a new multi-country initiative known as the Centres of Excellence (CoE).

The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), representatives of the European Union and CBRN experts are launching a joint CoE, which seeks to improve policies and unite countries across the globe against CBRN risks. [P] ARABIC | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION | SPANISH

Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By CAREY L. BIRON

WASHINGTON (IPS) - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is “significantly underfunded”, warns a new report released here on June 25.

The agency is labouring under a three-decade-old budget cap that, the report says, is significantly hampering the organisation’s ability to function at the necessary level. [P] GERMAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION

Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By DAISAKU IKEDA*

TOKYO (IPS) - In recent months, the dispute over the nature and intent of the Iranian nuclear development programme has generated increasing tensions throughout the Middle East region. When I consider all that is at stake here, I am reminded of the words of the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who warned that the perils of the nuclear age constituted a “Gordian knot that has to be untied by patient fingers instead of being cut by the sword.”  ARABIC | ITALIAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION | PORTUGUESE | SPANISH

Nuclear Abolition News | IDN

By JAMSHED BARUAH

BERLIN (IDN) - It is five minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. Inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and persistent inaction on climate change have prompted the eminent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) to move the hands of the famed clock one minute closer to midnight.

The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2010, when the Clock's minute hand was pushed back one minute from five to six minutes before midnight.

Nuclear Abolition News | IDN

Viewpoint by FREDERICK N. MATTIS**

ANNAPOLIS, USA (IDN) - A nuclear ban (abolition) treaty, often called a Nuclear Weapons Convention, will need to include a timetable for phased reductions of warheads until a final day when states simultaneously reach zero. The following is a plan for warhead elimination, with the aim of acceptability to today's nuclear weapon states – and framed on the reality that the USA and Russia have far more nuclear warheads than the other possessors (Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea).

Nuclear Abolition News | IPS

By THALIF DEEN

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - "The best way to eliminate the nuclear threat anywhere is by eliminating nuclear weapons everywhere", says Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, who is increasingly viewed as one of the strongest opponents of nuclear arms. [P] ARABIC | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION

But the lingering hopes of eliminating the nuclear threat keep receding: talks with Iran are deadlocked, North Korea continues its testing, and the politics of the Arab uprisings threaten to derail an international conference on a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, scheduled to take place in Finland in December.