Ireland has been joined by New Zealand, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico and Slovenia in launching a major international initiative to rekindle a move towards global nuclear disarmament.
A radical declaration, Towards a Nuclear Weapons Free World: The Need for a New Agenda, calling on the international community not to enter the third millennium under the shadow of the nuclear threat, was launched yesterday in Dublin and in seven other European, African, American and Pacific capitals.
The declaration demands that the five nuclear weapons states - Britain, China, France, the Russian Federation, and the US - and the three nuclear-capable states - India, Pakistan and Israel - should commit themselves to the elimination of nuclear weapons.
It states that the actual elimination of nuclear arsenals and the development of requisite verification regimes will require time, but insists that a number of practical steps should be taken at once.
"We call on them to abandon present hair-trigger postures by proceeding to de-alerting and deactivating their weapons. They should also remove non-strategic nuclear weapons from deployed sites," the declaration adds.
Ambassadors of the countries co-sponsoring the declaration heard the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, declare that opportunities to eliminate nuclear weapons since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War had been "squandered". This initiative was intent on securing a political will that would, in a few short years, consign nuclear weapons to history, he said.
"There is only one logical step for mankind now. That is to eliminate these weapons once and for all . . . We must secure a firm commitment on the part of the nuclear weapons states to proceed with the rapid elimination of nuclear weapons. Nothing less than a straight and unambiguous political commitment will do," Mr Andrews said.
Now that the declaration has been published, the eight sponsors will intensively lobby other countries to participate in the initiative. They will take the initiative to the UN General Assembly in New York in September in an effort to turn it into a resolution for adoption by member-states.
Following Irish contacts with Sweden, South Africa and New Zealand at the beginning of the year, the declaration was formulated in secrecy. Mr Andrews then lobbied other countries to bring them on board.
The leader of Democratic Left, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, said the move to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and to eliminate those in existence was welcome.
It was particularly positive to see Ireland joining with other countries, both inside and outside the EU, who shared concerns about the continuing threat posed to the world by the existence of such weapons.
The Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's national chairman, Mr Billy Fitzpatrick, described the Minister's initiative as "politically courageous and timely". The Green Party's spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr John Gormley TD, also said the move was "timely" given the threat of a nuclear arms race in South Asia following recent Indian and Pakistani weapons testing.