International Group seeks nuclear weapons ban
By Gordon Corera BBC security correspondent, Paris

A group of international dignitaries have launched a new campaign in Paris to eliminate nuclear weapons. Global Zero consists of 100 leading figures seeking practical steps towards nuclear abolition and gaining public support for that goal.

They say the risk of nuclear weapons spreading to unstable countries or getting into the hands of extremist groups is too great. The group will hold meetings in Moscow and Washington in the coming days.

In the past, talk of nuclear disarmament was confined to the margins of political debate, but now a chorus of national security officials past and present have joined calls for multi-lateral disarmament.

In the US, the debate was kick-started by a joint call for "getting to zero" from a group of veterans of the Cold War, including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz.

Global Zero's aim is to translate this stance to the international arena and into public debate.

Signatories for Global Zero include former US President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, businessman Sir Richard Branson, Ehsan Ul-Haq, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Pakistan, and Brajesh Mishra, former Indian National Security Advisor.

Motivating those who attended was a sense that this is a moment pregnant with both possibilities and dangers.

Possibilities because of new leadership in the US which appears to support the goal of nuclear abolition but dangers because of the fear that if this moment passes without action then the nuclear race could quickly gather pace with many more countries acquiring weapons and the risk increasing that weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.

"It's not about idealism, it is about public safety and security," said former British Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind who attended the conference. "If there's to be disarmament, it has to be multilateral," he added.

A key aim is to build public support for the issue in the way that activists have helped put climate change on the agenda.

Polling of 21 countries for Global Zero found an average of 76% of the population favouring an agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons within a timetabled agreement.

But members of Global Zero emphasise the need for more public information, particularly to educate the post-Cold War generation for whom the dangers of nuclear weapons may be more remote.

"We have to work on de-legitimising the status of nuclear weapons," Queen Noor of Jordan told the BBC.

The conference began on Monday with a presentation on what would happen to Paris in the event of a nuclear detonation before moving towards a discussion of what "Getting to Zero" would mean in practical steps, for instance the need for an intrusive system of inspections to ensure no country was evading its obligations.

"That process needs to start with American and Russian leadership," argued Richard Burt who was Washington's Chief Negotiator in the START talks in the early 1990s between the two countries and who chaired the press conference in one of Paris's ornate hotels.

The Global Zero group believes that reducing the still large US and Russian stockpiles - which make up 96% of all the nuclear weapons in the world - should be amongst the first steps which in turn can then draw in third parties and other nuclear powers into a wider and deeper process.

Nations sign cluster-bomb ban, US and Russia refuse
DOUG MELLGREN AP News

Nations began signing a treaty banning cluster bombs Wednesday in a move that supporters hope will shame the U.S., Russia and China and other non-signers into abandoning weapons blamed for maiming and killing civilians.

Norway, which began the drive to ban cluster bombs 18 months ago, was to be first to sign, followed by Laos and Lebanon, both hard-hit by the weapons.

Organizers said 88 countries were expected to sign on Wednesday and around 100 out of the world's 192 U.N. member nations will have signed by Thursday.

Cluster bomblets are packed by the hundreds into artillery shells, bombs or missiles that scatter them over vast areas. Some fail to explode immediately. The unexploded bomblets can then lie dormant for years until they are disturbed, often by children attracted by their small size and bright colors.

"Banning cluster bombs took too long. Too many people lost arms and legs," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said as he opened the conference.

Washington, Moscow and other non-signers say cluster bombs have legitimate military uses such as repelling advancing troop columns. But according to the group Handicap International, 98 percent of cluster-bomb victims are civilians, and 27 percent are children.

The Bush administration has said that a comprehensive ban would hurt world security and endanger U.S. military cooperation on humanitarian work with countries that sign the accord.

Activists said ahead of the signing that they hope the treaty will nonetheless shame non-signers into shelving the weapons, as many did with land mines after a 1997 treaty banning them.

"Once you get half the world on board, its hard to ignore a ban," said Australian anti-cluster bomb campaigner Daniel Barty. "One of the things that really worked well with the land-mine treaty was stigmatization. No one really uses land mines," he said.

The anti-cluster bomb campaign gathered momentum after Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah in 2006, when it scattered up to 4 million bomblets across Lebanon, according to U.N. figures.

"In southern Lebanon, for more than two years, children and the elderly have been victimized (by cluster munitions)," Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Saloukh said.

Norway called a conference to ban cluster bombs in February 2007. In May, more than 100 countries agreed to ban cluster bombs within eight years. The treaty must be ratified by 30 countries before it takes effect.

"I think it's awesome that 100 countries are coming to Oslo to sign (the new cluster bomb treaty)," said American Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to ban land mines.

See: stopclustermunitions.org

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says Israel has a nuclear arsenal of 150 weapons.
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Asked at a news conference at Wales's Hay literary festival on Sunday how a future U.S. president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Carter put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally.

"The U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (Russia) has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more. We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry ... not only of enormous weaponry but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks.

While experts have long maintained Israel has a nuclear arsenal, the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny it. The Times of London reported Carter's estimate earlier Monday.

Most estimates, many based on evidence leaked in 1986 by Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, put the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at between 100 and 200. But other experts have said the number is as low as 60 or as high as 400.

It was unclear from the newspaper's account whether Carter was citing those estimates, offering his own independent assessment or drawing on U.S. intelligence he would have had access to as president.

U.S. officials have generally avoided the issue of Israel's nuclear status, although during a 2006 Senate confirmation hearing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed that Israel was a nuclear power.

The Times, which did not quote him directly, said Carter made the comment Sunday while at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival on the border between England and Wales. He was discussing Iran, and the difficulty it would have in building a secret nuclear arsenal, when he mentioned the Israeli weapons, the paper said.

Reports on Carter's speech from the BBC, The Guardian and The Western Mail did not mention his estimate of Israel's nuclear stockpile.