30 April 2014
Church leaders: "The UK government has missed opportunities to make progress on disarmament"
The leaders of the Baptist Union, Methodist Church and United Reformed Church are pushing the government to make progress on disarmament at the Non Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting in New York this week. They are concerned that the UK government has failed to live up to commitments made at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 2010.
Steve Hucklesby, Policy Adviser for the Methodist Church, is part
of a World Council of Churches delegation attending the PrepCom
meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The
delegation will meet with representatives of governments around the
world. "The UK's report outlining four years' work is woefully
thin," he said. "Our government appears happy to talk about a
commitment to encouraging progress towards a world free of nuclear
weapons but then acts against some of the most promising
initiatives."
Leaders of seven UK Churches wrote to William Hague, the Secretary
of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, in March outlining a
series of missed opportunities for progress on promises made in
2010. The UK Government boycotted the Oslo and Nayarit
inter-governmental conferences, held last year and earlier this
year, on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. In his
letter to Church leaders, William Hague said: "We concluded that
the objectives of the (Oslo and Nayarit) conferences were at best
unclear and that many supporters of the conferences appeared to
have as their goal a nuclear weapons convention or other treaty
prohibiting nuclear weapons outright."
In response to William Hague's letter, Steve Hucklesby said:
"There is no adequate explanation from the Secretary of State as to
why an examination of the relationship between nuclear weapons and
International Humanitarian Law is such a concern to the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. The Oslo and Nayarit conferences did not focus
solely on the disarmament agenda; such conferences have the
potential to strengthen the Treaty as a whole. The NPT has been the
cornerstone of efforts to constrain non-proliferation for decades,
but it will be under threat unless the nuclear weapons' states take
their responsibilities seriously."
The Revd Dr Michael Jagessar, Moderator of the General Assembly of
the United Reformed Church, said: "The possession of chemical and
biological weapons is banned by international treaties and the same
should apply to nuclear weapons. While states continue to invest
billions in nuclear weapons there remains the risk of a nuclear
disaster either by accident or design. Our Churches have long
maintained that security policies based on the terror of a
catastrophic nuclear explosion are both unreliable and unethical;
that nuclear weapons offer more insecurity, fear, and a threat to
life; that true peace will not be found in a climate of fear; and
that the only ultimate protection against nuclear weapons is their
total elimination."
ENDS
Notes:
1. For more information, please contact Karen Burke.
2. To read the UK's NPT Review Conference report, click
here.
3. Read JPIT on "Towards a world without nuclear weapons"
here.