People's Conference Calls for a Nuclear-free Asia
Praful Bidwai
Asia Times, 26 February 2000
Dhaka - Now that India and Pakistan have become de facto nuclear weapons-states (NWS), South Asia has no alternative but to live with their atomic rivalry.
At best, they can be asked to control mutual hostility, make their nuclear weapons safe, and exercise restraint until the five 'official' NWSs move towards complete nuclear disarmament.
Right? Sounds reasonable? Yes, say many policy-makers in India and Pakistan, and even some strategic experts with their eyes focused on 'realistic' options before states.
Wrong, say people's organizations and Asian disarmament activists, with their emphasis firmly on the immorality, illegality and strategic irrationality of nuclear weapons, and their focus on comprehensive human security. That is the principal conclusion of more than 150 activists and scholars from 14 countries of South and Southeast Asia who met in Dhaka on February 18-20 at a nuclear disarmament conference, the first of its kind to to be held after India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests in 1998.
The conference gave a call for a nuclear-free Asia, stressed that nuclear weapons everywhere generate insecurity, not security, and demanded that India and Pakistan immediately freeze and dismantle their programs to develop nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, as well as sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other restraint measures, and return to the global disarmament agenda.
The three-day conference, with the motto 'Peace Builds, Bombs Destroy', discussed a range of issues pertaining to nuclear weapons, society and security.
It deliberated on the grave danger from the global arsenal (with its 35,000 nuclear weapons) and the state of the international nuclear disarmament negotiations - marked by impasse since the May 1998 South Asian tests, the enlargement of Nato, and the rejection by the US Senate of the CTBT.
The conference explored the connections between nuclear weapons, militarism, human rights and democracy and endorsed both comprehensive and international approaches to global nuclear weapons abolition.
The former involves a nuclear weapons convention. And the second, the step-by-step approach, includes No First Use commitments, de-alerting of nuclear weapons, separating warheads from delivery systems, stopping production of, and eradicating, all fissile materials, as well as regional approaches such as nuclear weapons-free zones (NWFZs). The conference stressed the relevance of negotiating NWFZs for all regions in the northern hemisphere including South Asia, and called upon Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to explore joining the already-signed Bangkok Treaty for an NWFZ in Southeast Asia. It recommended that Nepal be declared a nuclear-free zone of peace.
The Dhaka Declaration, issued at the end of the conference, condemned India and Pakistan for 'embracing the doctrine of deterrence, and undertaking the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery system', thus 'gravely endangering their own and the region's security and setting back the global nuclear disarmament agenda. This nuclearization imitates hegemonic states whose nuclear weapons represent the gravest danger to global security.'
The declaration deplored 'the recent hardening of nuclear postures in the region' as expressed in India's August 1999 Draft Nuclear Doctrine and Pakistan's announcement of a Command and Control structure.
It noted that 'nuclearization has escalated mutual suspicion and hostility between India and Pakistan, as witnessed in the Kargil conflict. It has strengthened communal, militarist, authoritarian and centralizing political tendencies within the two countries. The rapidly worsening security environment cannot be redressed by standard confidence-building and crisis-defusing measures. This is why the conference calls for an immediate freezing and dismantling of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear and missile programs.'
Although the main emphasis of the conference resolutions was on South Asia, the meeting also underscored the need for a global coalition of peace and anti-nuclear activists, at both Asian and international levels.
It called 'on the US, Russia, UK, France and China to honor their disarmament obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as re-emphasized by the 1996 World Court Judgment, and to ratify and live up to the spirit of the CTBT by closing down their test sites and halting development of new weapons designs.'
It said the P-5 'must also immediately undertake further steps towards disarmament such as the fissile materials treaty, taking nuclear weapons off alert and work towards a convention to abolish nuclear weapons. We oppose all proposals for ballistic missile systems, including research. The US and Russia must further the START process. Japan should cease cooperation with the US on Theater Missile Defense systems.'
The Dhaka conference was organized by Focus on the Global South (Bangkok and Mumbai) and Community Development Library (Dhaka). Focus has been actively campaigning for the past four years on alternative concepts of security as well as connection between security, economic policy and trade.
Among the issues discussed at length was the nexus between nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation. These are Siamese twins.
Nuclear power creates the infrastructure for weapons development; hence, the 'abolition of nuclear weapons cannot be sustained without ending reliance on nuclear power generation which has damaging social and ecological impacts. (The conference) therefore calls for pursuing alternative, sustainable, energy paths in the region.'
In particular, the conference demanded that Bangladesh reject the proposals made by certain lobbies to set up a nuclear
power generation plant at Rooppur - an unpopular project which, without economic or ecological rationale, spells serious environmental health hazards.
The conference brought together varying groups of activists from Japan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and from the South Pacific; besides international initiatives such as the Hague Appeal for Peace and the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms.
The conference concluded with what was probably the first-ever two-in-one demonstration in Asia at both Indian and
Pakistani missions. This colourful march, with multilingual slogans, was an expression of solidarity among different Asian groups. The demonstrators offered memoranda to both the missions. Pakistan diplomats agreed to receive them. The Indians refused.
The Dhaka Conference represents a growing phenomenon: increasing solidarity and joint action among public-spirited people on issues that until recently were considered outside the purview of civil society intervention, including security, trade, labor and environmental standards, and women's rights.
It prefigures increased coordination among nuclear abolitionists and intensive joint lobbying and advocacy in regional and international forums.
India's and Pakistan's overt nuclearization, one of the most dangerous developments to have occurred in recent years, which has led to a deterioration in the immediate security environment of 1.3 billion people, may then have a silver lining to it: it seems to have triggered a nuclear peace movement in South Asia, and impelled Indian and Pakistani activists to work jointly with one another and with others in the neighborhood as never before.
Copyright 2000 Asia Times
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