Nae Nukes – the Singapore Summit Puts Global Focus on Peace

Ahead of the Singapore summit  – and the forthcoming Nae Nukes mass rally at Faslane – the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) argues that the summit should lead to North Korea’s denuclearization, and that it should serve as the first step for the US, and all other nations that possess nuclear weapons, to disarm.

Dr Rebecca Johnson, one of the women who took part in last month’s historic women’s walk into the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which separates North and South Korea is bringing the Nobel Peace medal to the Scottish Parliament where she will talk about the upcoming summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim Jong Un. The summit taking place in Korea will have the attention of the world and could be another turning point for progress on global nuclear disarmament.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for its contribution to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and is focussing on ensuring that the implications of the treaty are well understood by those across the world who are watching and listening to the diplomats and the heads of state.

In Singapore this week, ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn, who visited the Scottish Parliament in March, will be joined by Akira Kawasaki from the Japanese NGO, Peace Boat, which belongs to ICAN’s core International Steering Group to issue a call for global nuclear disarmament, at a special news conference on Monday, one day ahead of the historic summit. Other leading figures from ICAN will be advocating for it around the world.

“March from the Peace Camp to the North Gate of Faslane Naval Base. Scottish CND, one of ICAN’s partner organisations in Scotland, would welcome you to join the working group, The aim is to to highlight the strength of support from many UN member states for Scotland, a country hosting nuclear weapons against its wishes and excluded from signing the Ban Treaty. International campaigners are joining us and we really need to make this a huge event to show the level of international support and present a clear challenge to the UK Government to recognise the TPNW, enter negotiations and decommission Trident. We hope to see campaigners from every part of the UK converging on the site to say time for the UK to wake up and wise up.”

ICAN states that the summit should lead to North Korea’s denuclearization, and that it should serve as the first step for the US, and all other nations that possess nuclear weapons, to disarm.

The First Minister of Scotland sent a message to the UN Conference where the Treaty was negotiated in support of a sucessful outcome.Scotland’s opposition to nuclear weapons is seen by many supporters of the TPNW as a significant wedge that can be driven into the UK’s nuclear strategy.

Dr Rebecca Johnson is the founding president of ICAN in Geneva and serves on ICAN’s International Steering Group. In addition to the Women Crossing the DMZ, she participated in meetings in Seoul in early April as a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and then spent 2 weeks at the UN in Geneva attending the NPT meeting held in May.

She is an expert on nuclear testing, authored the definitive book on how the CTBT was achieved, “Unfinished Business” and was an official scientific observer at on site inspection exercises at the former Soviet test site in Kazakhstan. She was senior advisor to Dr Hans Blix on the International WMD Commission, 2004-06, and holds a PhD in multilateral diplomacy and treaty-making. In addition to her academic and diplomatic roles, Rebecca is a former Greenham woman and spent a year in Scotland as part of the Faslane365 campaign.

Along with campaigners from Korea, Russia, France, the US, the Netherlands, Israel, Iran and Germany, she will be in Scotland at Scottish CND’s Nae Nukes Rally at Faslane on the 22nd September to amplify Scotland’s challenge to the UK Government to get on board with the TPNW.

All the details of the event are here.

Comments (13)

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  1. Richard Gunn says:

    Nae nuke, indeed, if this is what a ‘great’ America means. Trump is, I consider, one of the most dangerous individuals on planet earth.

    1. Charles L. Gallagher says:

      Richard, couldn’t agree more but do you notice that the Chump and for that matter anyone, never, ever mentions Israel’s nuclear weapons!!!!

      One law for ………………etc. etc

  2. Indyman says:

    So North Korea giving up their nukes would lead to the US & Israel giving up theirs? Really?

    1. tartanfever says:

      Of course, no serious demands are made of UK allies to reduce or de-arm nuclear capabilities, all the emphasis is placed on North Korea. Still, it tends to fit with the correct ‘Western narrative’ for articles on this website – the official good guys and bad guys as defined by her Majesty’s Government. When it comes to foreign policy, Bella is about as pro Western military as you can get. Which makes it about as progressive as John Bolton.

      For a more nuanced take on the North Korea summit, I would suggest reading Gareth Porter’s article over on truthdig. It’s an interesting insight into previous attempts to come to the negotiating table all made by North Korea and rejected by successive US governments.

      1. “Bella is about as pro Western military as you can get” is just such a fantastical dishonest piece of absolute nonsense as you can get which displays a fundamental ignorance of our writing over a decade. It betrays a sort of immoral simplism as has infected some section of a supposed left and bizarrly the nationalist movement which somehow seeks to see alliances between Putins turbo-capitalist authoritarianism or Assad’s murderous regime. Its unfathomably stupid.

  3. w.b.robertson says:

    must be embarrassing for the anti-Trump brigade if his Korean summit leads to nae nukes. or will they find something else to throw at the US president?

    1. LOL. Yeah that’s going to be tricky.

      1. Josef Ó Luain says:

        Don’t worry, it’s not going to happen. Dangerously, Trump will waste no time in saying to the world: “I gave it my very best shot, but that guy, Kim, doesn’t want to negotiate.”

        1. Wul says:

          Maybe not.

          Maybe the deal will be; “Open up your country to Coca Cola, Halliburton & KPMG and we can all be friends”

    2. John Mooney says:

      Yes,Merde!

  4. Bruce says:

    Just because you wish for something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen: like winning the Lottery, Marx’s false consciousness, Orville the duck wishing he could fly right up to the sky. This isn’t Kansas and clicking your heels together three times is not going to lead to global denuclearization. Shouldn’t we concentrate on the possible ?

  5. Janet Fenton says:

    One ‘possible’ is that the TPNW gets ratified before the next NPT – on the basis that there already are ten ratifications and its not even the end of the first year,with many other states in the process of creating the necessary legislation which will ensure that nuclear weapons become a bad investment for multinational companies, which the nuclear armed states already recognise because it has started to happen, with major investment withdrawn in Belgium and the Netherlands for instance.
    Concentrate on that by gettingthe info and sharing it.
    Another ‘possible’ is that Scotland will use its collective opposition to nuclear weapons to force the UK to abandon their continued deployment. We could do this politically, through independence.
    Concentrate on that by working for independence and putting nuclear disarmament at the heart of that work
    And another is that we can recognise that we have global support for being in a democratic deficit that makes brexit look like a hissy fit. compared to being forced to participate in a policy that puts the existence of life on the planet at risk.
    Concentrate on talking about and supporting the provisions of the TPNW every day in every possible situation to force the UK to reconsider nukes on a daily basis until they wake up to what they are doing and stop it.
    Draw attention to, or even stop the convoys carrying nuclear warheads through our villages and past our schools and insist that the risk is assessed and explained in public. Come to and support the Nae Nukes Rally to learn where Scotland is in the world, rather than sitting on the UK’s coat tails and waiting to win the lottery.
    For me, not doing something about it here in Scotland where the whole damnable thing is deployed by the UK is what is not the possible.

  6. Alistair MacKichan says:

    So, the Summit happened, and Kim Jong Un seemed to accept reduction in the N Korean nuclear weaponry as part of a negotiated package, which was probably mainly financial sweeteners from US. The problem is that Trump cannot be trusted to keep his side of the bargain, never mind Kim Jong Un.
    The tragedy is that there is a stand-off being diplomatically engineered between US and Russia, through which they seek to justify the upgrading rather than the downgrading of their nuclear arsenals.
    Scottish Independence, and the unseating of Trident from Faslane, would unsettle US confidence that it has support for its military hawks in the UN Security Council. Trump has been looking to Macron for that support, and we need to shame France as well as UK for their support of the primitive and intellectually bankrupt idea of nuclear deterrence as a defence strategy. We need a sea-change in world opinion on nuclear weaponry, and a big Thank You to ICAN for leading the way.

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