Brussels, 06/01/2005 (Agence Europe) - Green MEP Caroline Lucas has renewed calls for a complete ban on all nuclear weapons ahead of a UN-sponsored nuclear disarmament conference taking place in New York in May 2005 by the 'official' nuclear states - the UK, France, the US, Russia and China. The British MEP explains that all five official nuclear states are among the 188 to have committed themselves to disarmament since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signature in 1968. In 1996, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that this commitment was a legal obligation, and in 2000 all five pledged, again, to eliminate their nuclear arsenal, explains Dr Lucas in a press release. 'The reality is, in fact, just the oppos6ite: both the US and UK are developing a new range of weapons using nuclear technology, in complete defiance of their obligations under the NPT, and in the run-up to the Iraq war Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon pointedly refused to rule out a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Saddam.'
Caroline Lucas is a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and has signed the 'Declaration for a Nuclear Weapon Free World'. She explains: 'I have signed this declaration as, in this 60th anniversary year of the devastating nuclear strikes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we have an opportunity to use the five-yearly NPT Review conference as a catalyst for real progress on nuclear disarmament. The challenge we all face is to harness the outpouring of public and private grief and sympathy over the Boxing Day tsunamis to rid the earth of potential causes of the next disaster once and for all.' Dr Lucas adds that the European Parliament voted last year to call on all EU Member States to make a positive contribution to the New York conference.