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ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, RIGHT NOW! May 1998 Seven years back, India, on 11 and 13 May '98, carried out five nuclear blasts, at Pokhran on its western border, to declare itself as a nuclear weapons state (NWS). This was, however, not the first time that India executed such explosions. In fact, way back in 1974, on 18th May, India had for the first time, almost at the same spot, detonated its first nuclear device. But then it had been called a 'peaceful nuclear explosion' (PNE), and the explosion was dubbed 'implosion'. This time around, there was none of the diffidence of the past. The traditional aversion to nuclear weapons, rooted in the long drawn out freedom struggle and the subsequent leadership of the Non-Alignment Movement, was suddenly gone. It was muscle flexing all the way. It was vile celebration at its ecstatic peak. India has finally arrived! But the reality check came just a fortnight after. The lowly, neighbouring, Pakistan - the main target of all the muscle flexing, carried out its own blasts! Total six to square off the account! Flying in the face of the fantastic predictions made by the proponents of the Indian Bomb, Pokhran was followed by Chagai, and then Kargil in less than a year, after twenty seven years of relative peace. But that was not the end. Closely followed the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane, in December '99. And just not that, nuclear India's External affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh had to personally escort the Kashmiri militants to Kandahar to set them free to meet the hijackers' demands. And finally the Operation Parakram (Show of Might), involving the largest peacetime military mobilisation, for about ten months, on the Indo-Pak border meant to teach the recalcitrant neighbour a good lesson for the armed attack on Indian parliament building on 13th December 2001 eventually ended in a whimper. Pokhran just not inaugurated an open ended arms race between India and Pakistan and also made both of them far more, and not less, vulnerable to outside interventions, but, most disturbingly, also turned the whole region into a live nuclear volcano ready to erupt any moment, deliberately or accidentally! August 1945 Sixty years back the scourge of nuclear weapons had revealed itself to the unsuspecting world in all its ugly nakedness when the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated alive, on 6th and 9th August 1945, by two atom bombs dropped by the US Air Force. The gut wrenching tragedy that resulted in the death of twenty hundred thousand people by the end of the first year itself shocked and horrified the humanity all across the globe. A powerful global peace movement was born. But the widespread aversion notwithstanding, the race for power - the power to dominate and subjugate, went apace. In less than two decades, all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5) became nuclear weapons powers. Even then the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could just not be wiped off. Nor the prospects of an apocalypse caused by the piles and piles of nuclear warheads, which count no less than thirty thousand today. May 2005 This year, from 2-27 May, the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference will be held in New York. Five years back, in the 2000 Review Conference, the P5 - USA, Russia, UK, France and China, had given an 'unequivocal undertaking' to accomplish total elimination of nuclear weapons, in tune with the Article VI of the treaty, and the 1996 unanimous opinion of the International Court of Justice in this regard. 13 practical steps had been spelt out towards this end. Not only no progress has been made on this count. The US, by far the largest NWS and the greatest violator of the spirit of the treaty, is trying to block even any review of these commitments. It is putting all its energies and powers to confine the discussion only to 'horizontal proliferation', that too in an arbitrary and selective manner, to the complete exclusion of 'vertical proliferation', in which it is actively engaged in order to achieve 'full spectrum dominance' in the field of military firepower so as to establish its unchallengeable global domination as envisioned by the incumbent neo-con ruling coterie. The ongoing brutal war on and occupation of Iraq is perhaps the most glaring manifestation of this awesome imperial project. The peace activists of the world are organising global actions, including a massive one in New York on May 1, to scuttle such subversion of the Review Conference, and to demand total nuclear disarmament, in a step-by-step manner, by the year 2020. CNDP's Call The CNDP, as a constituent of this global campaign, spearheaded, among others, by the 'Mayors for Peace' and the 'Abolition 2000' network, urge all the peace-loving people - particularly from India, and South Asia, to mobilise and raise their voice on this momentous occasion in favour of total nuclear disarmament, in a step-by-step manner, on the national, regional and global scale. Friends, let us all unite and demand in unison : No More Hiroshima! No More Nagasaki! No More Pokhran! No More Chagai! Global Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Right Now! Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) www.cndpindia.org Also visit : http://www.abolitionnow.org/mayors.html http://www10.plala.or.jp/antiatom/html/e/abolition/e-abolish.html and join the global signature campaign 'Abolition Now!!' _________________________________ SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about Nuclearisation in South Asia South Asians Against Nukes Mailing List: archives are available @ two locations May 1998 - March 2002: <groups.yahoo.com/group/sap/messages/1> Feb. 2001 - to date: <groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/messages/1> To subscribe send a blank message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> South Asians Against Nukes Website: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN): An informal information platform for activists and scholars concerned about the dangers of Nuclearisation in South Asia SAAN Website: http://www.s-asians-against-nukes.org SAAN Mailing List: To subscribe send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SAAN Mailing List Archive : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/ ________________________________ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SAAN compilers. 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