- To the Editor, New York Times
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- The statement by a "White House official" in
response to North Korea's move to reopen a sealed nuclear reactor is breathtaking
in its blinding arrogance ("North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for
Processing Plutonium", 12-24-02). The statement that the North Koreans
must "live up to treaties and agreements and obligations" before
there can be negotiations heedlessly fails to acknowledge that the United
States has utterly failed to live up to our own agreements and obligations
under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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- In 1970, we promised, as a nuclear weapon state, to make
good faith efforts for nuclear disarmament in return for a promise from
the non-nuclear states, such as North Korea, not to acquire those lethal
instruments. We renewed that promise in 1995 when the 25-year-old treaty
was reviewed and extended. At the 2000 review conference we even promised
anew to take 13 specific steps to achieve that goal, including ratification
of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, maintaining the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty (ABM), and making nuclear disarmament steps irreversible.
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- President Bush has refused to submit the nuclear test
ban treaty to Congress, has publicly withdrawn from the ABM Treaty, and
has raised the budget of our Dr. Strangeloves at the weapons labs to $5.6
billion per year for research and development on "bunker buster"
weapons and new, smaller, more "usable" nuclear weapons, rendering
the pledge of "irreversibility" a hollow promise. The level of
hypocrisy expressed in our reprimand of tiny North Korea is stunning--
and dangerous as well. The only way to secure the homeland from nuclear
attack is to begin the long arduous path of negotiations to a nuclear weapons-free-world.
Our very possession of nuclear weapons is an invitation to others to acquire
them. The biggest stumbling block to progress for nuclear disarmament
lies within the misguided halls of power in the United States.
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- Alice Slater President
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