Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-08-Speech-2-148"
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"en.20050308.20.2-148"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Schmit, ladies and gentlemen, the holding of the Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in a few weeks’ time is very timely, for the emphasis over the past few months has been on real, and sometimes supposed, weapons of mass destruction, so much so that the attention for nuclear proliferation would have slackened had it not been for the developments in North Korea and Iran which have come as a wake-up call.
There is a real risk of the non-proliferation scheme being eroded to such an extent that it loses all meaning, with all the risks of a renewed, unbridled arms race that this entails, in a world made far more chaotic and far more dangerous by international terrorism. As I said, this debate and the joint resolution that is before us are very timely.
My group is urging both the EU institutions and the Member States to show a united front during the Review Conference, and argue forcefully in favour of new initiatives in terms of disarmament, in general, and nuclear disarmament, in particular. Since the Member States are made up of both nuclear and non-nuclear powers, this may not be so obvious. Precisely for that reason, I am pleased with the Council’s communication that hard work is going into a common position with a view to that conference. We would also like to urge all third member states and all European Union Member States that have not done so, to ratify the additional protocols to the International Atomic Energy Agency as a matter of urgency. In the same vein, it is of the utmost importance that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty should enter into effect as quickly as possible. If this is to happen, a number of states, including not least the US, still need to ratify it.
As for the United States, we do not quite understand why they constantly – and, in fact, with good reason– warn of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction while at the same time, working on a new generation of so-called ‘light’ nuclear weapons. Surely, it is beyond any doubt that such a development will once again herald an arms race, one that would, this time, involve a type of weapon that could even more easily end up in the wrong hands. We would therefore call on the US to abandon those plans and join us in investing all energy in reviving the efforts towards non-proliferation and disarmament."@en1
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