[sacw] South Asia Peace Mail, 10 Sep. 99

[Harsh Kapoor]

<smaller>South Asians Against Nukes Dispatch

10 Sept.1999

http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/NoNukes.html

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Contents:

#1. [On the Indian] Nuclear Doctrine 

#2. Belgium mulls nuclear equipment sale to Pakistan

#3. New project of organisors of Global Peace March [held earlier this
year across India]

#4. Zubin Mehta's Concert for Peace

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#1.

Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), Editorial August 21-28, 1999 

Nuclear Doctrine: Mainstreaming the Debate

<center>

</center>THE announcement of an Indian nuclear policy by the National
Security Advisory Board (NSAB) came as no surprise. After all this is
simply a documentation of the government’s nuclear agenda which opened
with the Pokhran tests, an agenda which has not been given the stamp of
approval yet, not having been subject to parliamentary debate. What is
curious is, of course, its timing. Announced and released at a time
when the country is in the throes of elections after which, regardless
of who returns to power, the government will have a changed
composition, the nuclear policy document ensures that no political
party can afford to avoid setting out a clear policy statement on the
nuclear issue. In fact that is its stated purpose: "to encourage public
debate on the topic".

Insofar as it has put down on paper views on nuclear weaponisation
which one presumes are those of the BJP-led government, it is in the
nature of a gambit which if pursued will effectively prepare the ground
for the long-overdue public debate on nuclear issues. Taken further, it
may well be the first major step towards articulation of well-founded
mass opinion not only on the nuclear issue but issues relating to
weapons of mass destruction in general. It is not that there has been
no public debate, but these have generally remained on the fringes, on
the platforms of alternative streams of opinion. In the past while
political parties have had a 'consensus' on nuclear weapons, that
consensus has not been arrived at through public debate. In
consequence, the nuclear issue came into the pubic arena for some
specific reasons, such as the signing of the Nuclear Proliferation
Treaty, and the debate has necessarily been a fractured one. At another
level, there has been a curious disjuncture: political parties have by
and large quite impressively and wholeheartedly supported the
'peaceful' development of nuclear power, etc, again without debate,
even while protesting loudly on the nuclear issue. With the Pokhran
tests, the disjuncture has been even more sharp, with nuclear power
issues almost acquiring a sacrosanct status, a status seen to be
violated by India’s entry into the nuclear weapons arena through the
nuclear tests.

A first criticism of what has been titled the Indian Nuclear Doctrine
would be that it is silent on aspects other than weaponisation.
Nowhere, not even in the preamble, is there a suggestion (one would not
expect anything more in a brief document) that there are other critical
issues to be dealt with. It is hardly necessary to point to the links
between a 'peaceful' nuclear programme and weapons. And in India, the
rationale for the huge investment in nuclear power and its development
has never been debated at any level. This is another area of
'consensus' without debate. That there is so little comprehension of
the impact of nuclear damage, by whatever source, is evident in what
the document has to say on 'safety' and 'disaster control'. The
ensuring of "tamper proof procedures and systems’ to prevent
unauthorised use of nukes is just one aspect of safety; the other more
important aspect is to ensure that those who deal with them, those who
manufacture them - at all stages - are safe and those who may be
exposed to accidental releases may be rendered the best possible care.
Moreover, safety is not a limited concept - for after all to make the
environment safe for people the government must attempt to put them at
least risk from severe damage and death. The very production and build
up of nuclear weapons makes this impossible. Brajesh Mishra's remark on
the responsibility and restraint of our political leadership as
demonstrated in Kargil - "as you would expect from the largest
democracy in the world" - hardly inspires confidence. And as for
disaster control, in India this has not been possible for even the
seasonal natural disasters, often predictable, which take so many
hundreds of lives, nor for mishaps in areas potentially at risk as for
instance around chemical plants. To imagine that under the nuclear
umbrella an appropriate system would be developed for an emergency the
likelihood of which is officially regarded as remote is absurd.

It would be easy enough to dismiss the document as yet another of the
BJP-led government’s ploys in the political game of one-upmanship. It
would be more worthwhile, however, to take the document seriously and
use it as a platform for launching a massive campaign, not necessarily
against a particular party's preoccupations, but on the much more
serious issue of nuclearisation in all its dimensions.

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#2.

DAWN

10 September 1999 

http://www.dawn.com/daily/19990910/top17.htm 

Belgium mulls nuclear equipment sale to Pakistan

By Shadaba Islam

<center>

</center>BRUSSELS, Sept 9: Belgium's new rainbow-coalition of Liberal
and Green parties will decide on Thursday on whether to abandon or
press ahead with plans to sell $2 million worth of electronic
components to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (Kanupp) outside
Karachi.

The contract for the delivery of a so-called 'nuclear instrumentation
system' to Pakistan has become the subject of fierce political
controversy in Belgium, with Green party members in the government of
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt vigorously opposed to the deal.

Part of the problem is clearly the Green parties's traditional stance
against the use and spread of nuclear power. But critics of the sale,
both inside and outside the government, have also voiced concern that
Pakistan, following its nuclear tests last May, could use the
Belgian-supplied equipment to increase its 'military' nuclear capacity.
"The fear is that the equipment could inadvertently lead to an increase
in nuclear proliferation," said one Belgian analyst. "The link between
civil and military nuclear usage in Pakistan is very strong," he
added.

Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir called Pakistan a 'politically high
risk' nation, warning of Islamabad's increased tensions with India over
Kashmir. Belgium is also under American and British pressure to stop
the planned sale, sources say.

Belgium, like other members of the nuclear suppliers club, does not
sell nuclear material or equipment to countries which have not signed a
full-scope nuclear safety agreement with the Vienna-based International
Energy Agency.

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#3.

[From: Bobby Ramakant (India) / Date: 10 Sept.99]

Dear Friends,

As a continuation of world-wide campaign for global peace and total
nuclear disarmament, a phase of which has culminated this year with
Global Peace March from Pokaran to Sarnath (May 11 to August 6), people
associated with this peace movement, unanimously wished to focus the

next year’s Hiroshima Day (August 6,2000) on children.

At this turn of century, when we are about to enter a new millennium,
it will be noteworthy that the future torchbearers of this World-our
children- may give a strong mandate for peaceful world order. A
movement, involving children all over the World has been so designed so
as to inculcate ideas for total nuclear disarmament in fertile minds of
children and also to initiate a vital thought process in them towards
establishing a value-based human world order.

For the whole coming year, we wish to conduct open discussions with
children on issues of security, peace, and viability of nuclear option.
Children will also be involved in participating in various events

including theatre and making paper cranes by origamy. As you might be
aware of, Sadako, a little girl in Hiroshima, died of Leukaemia (blood
cancer) in a Hospital in Japan since she was affected by the radiations
from Atom Bomb dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945. After having
come to know of her disease, she started making cranes from paper as it
was believed in Japan that your death would be averted if you make 1000
paper cranes. She could make about 644 cranes when she died.

On the coming August 6, 2000, children of this planet will once again
commemorate Sadako’s death anniversary. They will make paper-cranes for
Sadako, complete a dream which Sadako could not complete, as she
succumbed to blood cancer. And thereby these children, the harbingers
of

our ‘tomorrow’, will also make a robust statement that they want peace,
not war, bread, not bombs, love, not conflicts.

Children in different parts of the World, will be approached and their
support to this movement will be solicited for the coming one year.

Besides, it has also been decided that on the eve of next year’s
Hiroshima Day-August 6, 2000, 5-member delegations of children from
different parts of the World, will be invited to Bodh Gaya (tentative
venue), where a peace summit will be convened by these assembled
children and concerned individuals.

If you feel interested to join hands in this humble movement, please
contact:

Jaya Iyer- ‘Pravah’68-A, Gautam Nagar, New Delhi-49 e_mail:

arjundel@d...

Shyamal De-'Paribesh Chetna' 102, Seth Bagan Road, Calcutta-700030

e_Mail: p_chetana@h...

Bobby Ramakant-Sandeep-Arundhati, A-893, Indira Nagar,
Lucknow-226016.

e_mail:asha@l..., ramakant@l...

Rahul Pandey, Mumbai e_mail: yet-to-be-known

And before I forget, may I remind you, that we have to make an impact
powerful enough on coming August 6, 2000 (Hiroshima Day) so that no
other child like Sadako may ever die of Leukaemia or suffer from
radioactivity related health hazards. Complete nuclear disarmament in
World is the need of the hour. We have no choice. And we will make our
best effort. I will. And I trust, you will too. Keep the faith!

Bobby Ramakant C-2211, Indira Nagar, Lucknow-16.India.

ramakant@l...

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#4.

INDIA ABROAD

September 10, 1999

PERFORMING ARTS - Music

Zubin Mehta conducts concert at Buchenwald

By JYOTIRMOY DATTA

<center>

</center>NEW YORK -- India-born conductor Zubin Mehta drew upon music's
power of healing and reconciliation when he conducted more than 170
musicians from the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israeli
Philharmonic on Aug. 29 in the German city of Weimar, The New York
Times reported on Aug. 31.

Mehta, longtime director of the Israeli Philharmonic and recently
appointed music director of the Bavarian State Opera, accompanied his
German and Jewish musicians on a tour of the Nazi death camp of
Buchenwald hours before the performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.
2, the "Resurrection," which rises from its dark first movement to a
soaring finale, affirming the triumph of the human spirit.

Weimar, hallowed for its association with the great German poet,
Goethe, an apostle of harmony and internationalism, and at the same
time accursed for its association with the Holocaust, has been named
Europe's "cultural capital" for 1999 where the wounds of the past are
sought to be healed through concerts in which musicians from former
enemy nations play side by side.

Mehta told Roger Cohen of the Times that he had been apprehensive that
there might be a feeling of resistance among his musicians to the
concert at the foot of the Buchenwald hill, but there was none, and he
felt that if after 50 years Jews and Germans can be together near
Buchenwald, there will one day be reconciliation between Jews and
Arabs, too.

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#4. 

</smaller>