Press coverage of

Press coverage of National Convention for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace New Delhi, India, 11-13 November 2000

India, Pakistan gained nothing from N-tests
The News International, Pakistan, 12 November 2000

Nuclear tests of India and Pakistan in 1998 have not helped them in any way, anti-nuclear activists said here on Saturday at the start of a three-day conference.

Hundreds of activists, including about 50 delegates from Pakistan, lashed out at both New Delhi and Islamabad at the conference, the first event to be held in New Delhi since the rivals' stunning nuclear tests.

Indian author Booker Prize winner and social activist Arundhati Roy derided Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist-led coalition government for staging the tests. She said the theory that "those who march in khaki shorts and swear by bombs are patriots," was not acceptable, referring to Hindu nationalists who regularly stage physical fitness programmes dressed in white singlets and khaki shorts.

Roy's colleague, Medha Patkar, a celebrated social activist best known for her decade-long campaign against the building of one of the world's biggest dams in western India, said the Indian government had "distorted priorities.

Pakistani intellectual and anti-nuclear campaigner MB Naqvi told the conference that the nuclear tests had literally bombed. She said: "The fact of the matter is that your country was taken more seriously in 1950s than it is being taken today," he said. "Rather Pakistan's success in countering your nuke tests has only demoted India's position."

Intellectuals Condemn Nuclear Tests
DAWN Internet Edition, 12 November 2000

NEW DELHI, Nov 11: Pakistan and India's nuclear tests in 1998 have not helped them in any way, anti-nuclear activists said here on Sunday at the start of a three-day conference.

Hundreds of activists, including about 50 delegates from Pakistan, lashed out at both New Delhi and Islamabad at the conference, the first event to be held in New Delhi since the stunning nuclear tests.

Indian author, Booker Prize winner and social activist Arundhati Roy, derided Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist-led coalition government for staging the tests.

She said the theory that "those who march in khaki shorts and swear by bombs are patriots", was not acceptable, referring to Hindu nationalists who regularly stage physical fitness programs dressed in white singlets and khaki shorts.

Roy's colleague, Medha Patkar, a celebrated social activist best known for her decade-long campaign against the building of one of the world's biggest dams in western India, said the Indian government had "distorted priorities". "This is the same government which screams about religion and 'dharma' (righteousness) on the one side and on the other hand goes for an instrument of mass destruction. There is an inherent contradiction."

Pakistani intellectual and anti-nuclear campaigner M. B. Naqvi said the nuclear tests had literally bombed. "The fact of the matter is that your country was taken more seriously in 1950s than it is being taken today," he said. "Rather Pakistan's success in countering your nuke tests has only demoted India's position."-AFP

Anti-Nuke convention draws Pak activists
The Times of India, 10 November 2000

NEW DELHI: Undeterred by the cold freeze between their governments, anti-nuclear activists of India and Pakistan plan to meet in the Capital to protest the nuclear agendas of their governments and build public opinion against it. The three-day national convention for nuclear disarmament and peace, from November 11 to 13, will be attended by 500 delegates, including 60 activists from Pakistan.

Over 110 trade unions and NGOs are sponsoring the convention which will also see representation from international peace groups and delegates from other South Asian countries.

Announcing this at a press conference on Thursday, the convenors said it would be a landmark conference signalling growing support for the movement for nuclear disarmament. The aim of the convention would be to establish a national network of groups and individuals committed to global nuclear disarmament.

Amongst those expected to attend the conference are Nirmala Deshpande, Medha Patkar, Arundhati Roy, Admiral N. Ramdas, N. Ram, Asma Jehangir, Magsaysay awardee Aruna Roy, and M.B. Naqvi.

The convention, organisers said, would discuss a wide range of issues from the adverse security consequences of weaponisation and its social and economic costs to communalism, militarism, and politics and moral and legal arguments against the evil of nuclear weapons.

While some of the participants at the conference have been strong votaries of the CTBT, the broad-based platform has only agreed on the need for an end to testing. The conference hopes to create awareness about the dangers of nuclearisation, need to halt and reverse the nuclear weapons programmes of India and Pakistan, and network amongst peace and nuclear disarmament groups to promote transparency and safety in all nuclear programmes.

A Platform for Peace
Sukumar Muralidharan, Frontline, Vol. 17 - No. 24, 25 November 2000

The new idiom of security that has come into existence after Pokhran-II compels a coalescence of forces around the ideas of nuclear disarmament and peace.

A three-day convention in New Delhi held between November 11 and 13 laid the groundwork for the formation of a Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, bringing together on one platform the diverse range of protest groups that emerged following the I ndian nuclear tests of May 1998. Though the new body will focus its endeavours primarily within India, a degree of coordination with peace movements in the neighbourhood and elsewhere is indicated by the participation of no fewer than 50 delegates from Pakistan, 15 from other parts of South Asia and 20 from the global anti-nuclear movement.

SANDEEP SAXENA A street play against nuclear weapons, at the venue of the convention.

The nuclear domain is one where diverse shades of opinion can often coexist. India witnessed that phenomenon in 1996, when ardent champions of disarmament, nuclear strategists and national security hawks made common cause in rejecting the Comprehensive T est Ban Treaty (CTBT) as a decidedly dubious pact, which would contribute little to the goal of a

That tenuous coexistence of opposites fell apart after the Pokhran nuclear tests of May 1998 and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government's decision to deploy what it euphemistically titled a "minimum credible deterrent". The new realities compelled a c oalescence of forces around the ideas of nuclear disarmament and peace. After some years when peripheral differences tended to enjoy undue prominence, the new idiom of national security succeeded once again in focussing minds on the fundamentals.

The charter adopted at the convention provides the essential elements of the Coalition's programme for the years ahead. Nuclear weapons, the Coalition believes, should be resolutely opposed whether it is in India, South Asia or globally. Apart from drain ing scarce resources, nuclear weapons were inherently genocidal and only promoted a generalised sense of insecurity. India's attempt to blast its way into the nuclear club in 1998 was a betrayal of its own ethical positions in the past. The damage could be partly undone only by an unequivocal commitment to reverse the preparations under way to assemble and induct nuclear weapons into the Indian arsenal.

A number of other agreements are structured around this basic compact. For instance, the Convention witnessed a range of opinions on the utility and legitimacy of the nuclear energy programme worldwide. But the final consensus was to avoid any specific f indings on the links between nuclear energy and weapons. There was little dissent, though, over the assertion that civilian nuclear programmes in India needed to institutionalise a greater degree of transparency and accountability through all stages of the fuel cycle - from uranium mining to spent fuel management and waste disposal.

The ethics and practical utility of various nuclear restraint measures came in for minute scrutiny. Here again, a range of views was witnessed. A section within the Convention argued that initiatives such as the CTBT had an inherent value as part of a gl obal disarmament movement. The optimal strategy for the peace movement would be to take each measure as part of a connected whole, as steps towards an ultimate goal of a nuclear-free world.

Another viewpoint emphasised that the Nuclear Weapon States (NWSs) were responsible for fostering a climate of impunity in which there were no rewards for the principled renunciation of weapons of mass destruction. Rather, the prreviewent climate seemed to provide overt incentives for clandestine weapons proliferation. To retrieve their fast diminishing credibility, the NWSs needed, at the minimum, to provide iron-clad "negative security assurances" to the non-nuclear states.

In the current context, the greatest hazard facing the nuclear disarmament campaign is the imminent US decision on the deployment of a National Missile Defence. Recognising this, the Convention adopted a resolution "condemning" the NMD proposal and urg ing the Indian government to shed its equivocation on this issue.

The Convention also adopted an action plan that places emphasis on the formation of linkages among various movements that have so far been proceeding in a rather uncoordinated fashion. It includes the formation of a "clearing house" of ideas, literature and campaign material on disarmament and the illegitimacy of nuclear deterrence as a strategic doctrine.

A 40-member coordination committee was set up by the convention to formulate the next steps in the Coalition's practical agenda. The apex body includes figures such as Admiral L. Ramdas, former Chief of the Naval Staff, and Achin Vanaik, writer and peace activist. Distinguished
scientists and researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, and the National Institute of Immunology, Delhi, are also involved with the committee.