Expert calls for citizens inspections:

More focus on nuclear weapons sites needed

 

Nuclear non-proliferation expert Greg Mello today called on MEPs to take more interest in nuclear weapons sites in both the US and EU in order to tackle the lack of accountability and security at these sites and to challenge the dangerous direction of American nuclear policy.

 

Speaking at a lunchtime briefing in the European Parliament on 'the reality of the U.S. situation – the nuclear build-up in pictures and tables', Mello, who is the Director of the Los Alamos Study Group, called for Europeans to undertake their own fact-finding missions to America to shed light on nuclear programs – and help roll them back. Mello said:

 

“It is important that EU leaders become more involved in US nuclear weapons policy decisions which are hurting efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. The direction of US policy is quite dangerous, and the state of debate in America is utterly incapable of restraining these dangers. American nuclear policy needs a closer review by leaders in other democracies."

 

"We can not promote compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) while we break it everyday by retaining huge stockpiles of weapons and working to make these weapons more usable militarily. The extent to which this is going on is something US diplomats do not talk or even know about and it affects all of us. The difficult negotiations with Iran are not helped by continued US violations of the NPT and the recent tendency of the US to denigrate multinational efforts in favour of unilateral expressions of power."

 

UK Green MEP Jean Lambert, who chaired the briefing, said:

 

"Given the terrible state of the US nuclear weapons programme, its extent and its continuation, the EU needs to learn from citizen's inspections – not least because there are US nuclear weapons situated in Europe. I was very interested by the discussions among MEPs about the NPT in the last plenary session in Strasbourg, and how horrified people were that nuclear development was going on outside the EU. Yet, we are not facing up to the realities within Europe; we are just burying our heads in the sand. We are now at the point where citizens must make a choice about spending millions of euros and dollars on spurious security measures."

 

[ENDS]