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Carter Knocks White House on Commitment to NPT
The United States is the “major culprit” in the weakening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, former President Jimmy Carter said in a commentary published yesterday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (see GSN, March 8). “While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including antiballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating ‘bunker buster’ and perhaps some new ‘small’ bombs,” Carter wrote. “They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.” There is no agenda yet for the May treaty review conference in New York “because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the non-nuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal,” according to Carter. He recommended several “corrective actions,” including: further work on reducing the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals; consideration by NATO of ending the deployment of nuclear weapons in Western Europe; U.S. commitment to honor the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and support for a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty; and reducing work on the “infeasible” U.S. missile defense system (Jimmy Carter, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 29).
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