6-01-05,10:32am

From Morning Star

SADLY, it would appear that the non-proliferation talks that have just finished have produced little or no advance in one of the great causes of this new century, the final abandonment of nuclear weapons.

And it is not exaggerating to say that the blame can be laid fairly and squarely at the door of one country — the United States.

Once every five years, the countries of the world have the opportunity to move the debate along and restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons and, in addition, monitor the progress of the existing nuclear states in fulfilling the other part of the treaty, which is the reduction and eventual elimination of their great nuclear weapons stockpiles.

The US appears to believe that only the first part counts — and then only when it concerns their perceived opponents such as non-weapons country Iran, rather than their fully tooled-up Israeli mates. Bush and his minions seem to have a complete blind spot when it comes to the interests of the world as a whole rather than their vision of how to deliver the New American Century.

Many of the issues that arise at this conference are of legitimate interest to the participants, such as Arab concern over the Israeli bomb, or the abhorrent US habit of so-called “nuclear sharing” — a euphemism for US nuke bases abroad.

But these have been thoroughly bypassed in order to intensify the US offensive on Iran and, when that offensive was not acceptable to the conference, the US proceeded to sulk about everything else.

One has to ask what on earth the US sees as such an enormous threat that it needs to maintain weapons of such destructive power that to use them in a full-scale war would be to destroy the planet’s ecological systems to an extent that the damage could easily be irreversible.

Could it be that the world’s only remaining superpower is not so much threatened by the present world order as by the emergence of China as a future force to be neutralised.

One would hope not, but, given the xenophobia that lurks thinly camouflaged under the US veneer of international co-operation, it is highly likely.

But, even if that is the case, then surely it is in the US national interest as well as every other country’s that any possible confrontation be moved out of the nuclear arena as expeditiously as possible.

If there is to be that confrontation, then history should be the judge of the relative efficiencies of the different political and economic systems, not the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

It is time that the politicians of the world listened a little more closely to the biggest world movement there is — the peace movement.

Decentralised and fractured as it is, its heartfelt plea for peace and progress nevertheless represents the greatest common cause there is among the world’s billions of people.

Britain’s political leaders should and must listen to that plea. If Tony Blair wants to leave a legacy behind him, being the standard-bearer for peace and disarmament would be a more significant and honourable one than lapdog to the great warmonger.