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Posted 8:20 AM by Mary

April 17, 2006
The Honorable George W. Bush

Dear Mr. President:

Recent articles in the New Yorker and Washington Post report that the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran is being actively considered by Pentagon planners and by the White House. As members of the profession that brought nuclear weapons into existence, we urge you to refrain from such an action that would have grave consequences for America and for the world.

1800 of our fellow physicists have joined in a petition opposing new US nuclear weapons policies that open the door to the use of nuclear weapons in situations such as Iran's. These policies represent a "radical departure from the past", in the words of Linton Brooks, National Nuclear Security Administration director. Indeed, since the end of World War II, US policy has considered nuclear weapons "weapons of last resort", to be used only when the very survival of the nation or of an allied nation was at stake, or at most in cases of extreme military necessity. Instead, the new US nuclear weapons policies have significantly lowered the threshold for the potential use of nuclear weapons, as clearly evidenced by the fact that they are being considered as another tool in the toolbox to destroy underground installations that are "too deep" to be destroyed by conventional weapons. This is a major and dangerous shift in the rationale for nuclear weapons. In the words of the late Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his efforts to prevent nuclear war, "the danger of this policy can hardly be over-emphasized".

Nuclear weapons are unique among weapons of mass destruction: they unleash the enormous energy stored in the tiny nucleus of an atom, an energy that is a million times larger than that stored in the rest of the atom. The nuclear explosion releases an immense amount of blast energy and thermal and nuclear radiation, with deadly immediate and delayed effects on the human body. Over 100,000 human beings died in the Hiroshima blast, and nuclear weapons in today's arsenals have a total yield of over 200,000 Hiroshima bombs.

Using or even merely threatening to use a nuclear weapon preemptively against a nonnuclear adversary tells the 182 non-nuclear-weapon countries signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that their adherence to the treaty offers them no protection against a nuclear attack by a nuclear nation. Many are thus likely to abandon the treaty, and the nuclear non-proliferation framework will be damaged even further than it already has, with disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.

There are no sharp lines between small "tactical" nuclear weapons and large ones, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting armies or cities. Nuclear weapons have not been used for 60 years. Once the US uses a nuclear weapon again, it will heighten the probability that others will too. In a world with many more nuclear nations and no longer a "taboo" against the use of nuclear weapons, there will be a greatly enhanced risk that regional conflicts could expand into global nuclear war, with the potential to destroy our civilization.

It is gravely irresponsible for the U.S. as the greatest superpower to consider courses of action that could eventually lead to the widespread destruction of life on the planet. We urge you to announce publicly that the U.S. is taking the nuclear option off the table in the case of all nonnuclear adversaries, present or future, and we urge the American people to make their voices heard on this matter.

Authored by:

Philip Anderson, Nobel Laureate
Michael Fisher, Wolf Laureate
David Gross, Nobel Laureate
Jorge Hirsch, Professor of Physics
Leo Kadanoff, National Medal of Science
Joel Lebowitz, Boltzmann Medalist
Anthony Leggett, Nobel Laureate
Eugen Merzbacher, President, American Physical Society, 1990
Douglas Osheroff, Nobel Laureate
Andrew Sessler, President, American Physical Society, 1998
George Trilling, President, American Physical Society, 2001
Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate
Edward Witten, Fields Medalist

Posted 10:15 PM by Mary

Mr Pascal Lamy
Director General of the WTO
April 18, 2006

Re: Using Non-inclusive Ministerials to Conclude the Doha Round
Dear Mr. Lamy,

We are deeply concerned about your call for some Ministers to meet in Geneva in late April and early May. We are opposed to such a Mini-Ministerial meeting that could lead to critical decisions being made by only a handful of Ministers. It is now too late for the majority of Ministers to make their way to Geneva, especially when it remains unclear what the agenda of the meeting will be, and therefore unclear if it will be worth Ministers’ scarce financial resources and time. Therefore, we are calling on you as WTO Director General and chair of the TNC to cancel this ad hoc exclusive Ministerial-level gathering and ensure that all WTO member delegations are fully involved in any negotiations regarding the Doha Round.

Your proposal at the recent TNC that “the establishment of modalities as foreseen by the Hong Kong Declaration will require some sort of Ministerial involvement during the last week of April, with a safety net beginning of May” contradicts your previously stated commitment to a bottom-up approach to the negotiations. Any negotiations or decision-making process that happens at the end of April or at any time should be all-inclusive, transparent, and with the full participation of all members, as per the WTO mandate.

The current situation adds to the mounting concerns shared by civil society and many developing country officials: that exclusive meetings of certain countries to further negotiations in the WTO have become the main negotiating arena for the Doha Round. These exclusive meetings include the recent Senior Officials meeting of the WTO in Geneva on the 7-9th of March, the Mini-Ministerial meeting in London on the 10-11th of March, and the recent Micro- Ministerial in Rio on March 31-April 1, which you attended. While groups of Ministers, ambassadors and/or delegates are certainly free to meet informally, our concern is that these meetings have become the main negotiating fora.

The countries that are being excluded from these undemocratic and non-inclusive decision-making processes are, of course, the majority of the WTO’s member countries, including the LDCs, the ACP, and the Africa Group. These are the same countries which now face a Doha Round conclusion that, if implemented, would harm the majority of their populations, as confirmed by recent Carnegie, World Bank, and other studies, because of the manner in which the negotiations process has been dominated by the interests of the rich and powerful countries which have forced development issues off the agenda.

If your call for Ministerial involvement is not to be seen as a wilful continuation of this undemocratic, top-down approach, then it is imperative that every member has equal access to the decision-making processes of the Doha Round.

We therefore demand that the entire membership of the WTO be invited to be involved in all processes and all meetings with regards to future WTO negotiations. The presence of some Ministers must not become a pretext for exclusive Green Room meetings where decisions are made without the presence of all WTO members.

May we remind you that articles 48 and 49 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration make abundantly clear that the Director General, above all, should be committed to ensure that the negotiations are open to all members of the WTO and that they should be conducted in such a manner that facilitates the effective participation of all in order to achieve benefits for all members and an overall balance in the outcome of the negotiations. This mandate however has been repeatedly violated over the course of the negotiations.

Sir, you have expressed a commitment to democratic process and transparent operation of the WTO. Yet your invitation to Ministers to come to Geneva seems inconsistent with your espoused commitments.

We have serious concerns that your proposed process is likely to be a recreation of the procedurally flawed situation that produced the July package in 2004, where only a select circle of Ministers were present at a Mini-Ministerial in Geneva, which became the main decision making and negotiating forum. Decisions were made without the full participation of the entire membership that were as critical as those of a formal Ministerial Conference.

If your past statements are to be more than rhetoric, we would like to hear from you, as to how you are implementing your responsibility to ensure that decision-making is based on the full participation of all members.

We seek your urgent consideration of the above matters and your prompt assurance that honest, democratic and inclusive processes, not the interests of the powerful few or looming timelines, will determine the process of WTO negotiations.

Yours truly,

cc: Permanent Representatives of Member States, WTO
Deborah James
Director of WTO Program
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
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