July 14 will be the 25th anniversary of the election of the 4th Labour Government, a government that had tense relations with the big nuclear military powers of America, the UK and France.
The main problem was New Zealand's decision to legally ban nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed military craft from entering New Zealand territory. A secondary problem was our opposition to nuclear testing in the South Pacific. A third problem, unstated, was that New Zealand had set a bad precedent - what if other democratic countries followed us and declared themselves nuclear-free?
So a quarter of a century ago New Zealand under a Labour government was suspended from the ANZUS military pact because of our bad behaviour.
The good news is that on Sunday it became clear that the U.S. is coming around to our way of thinking. The future of mankind is at stake, President Barack Obama said, "all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms".
It has been many years since the substance of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty has been on the international agenda. The commitment of its signatories is to reduce toward zero stockpiles of these weapons of mass destruction. Disarmament is a key pillar of the Treaty which only four States have so far refused to sign (India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea).
As for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, there are 44 states that possess nuclear technology that need to both sign and ratify it before it can take effect and only 35 have done so. The hold up, until now, is due to these nine: the United States, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/05/world/AP-EU-Obama.html?ref=global-home
After a long break, we are in 2009 getting real leadership from the United States on a fundamental global human rights issue.
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