http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/55.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)Pacific Pintail (at 2200 GMT) is 32 degrees 14 minutes North, and 154 degrees and 54 minutes East. The Pintail's course is 310 degrees at a speed of 8.5 knots. If Pintail maintains this speed the ship will arrive in Mutsu Ogawara on the 23rd (Sunday) although Japanese officials have said it will arrive on the 25th.
Transports of radioactive waste and plutonium find their origin in the commercial plutonium separation industry in France, the United Kingdom and Japan. Yesterday, in New York the Review and Extension Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) started, where some 170 States Party to the Treaty meet to discuss the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons, weapons technology and materials in the context of full nuclear disarmament and global security.
As the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference (NPT) began at the United Nations, Greenpeace activists locked themselves to the U.S. Mission to the UN in New York, to protest U.S. moves to indefinitely extend the failed Treaty. The activists, wearing radiation suits and lengths of chain, attached themselves to the Mission entrance, opposite the U.N., shortly before the four-week NPT Conference opened today.
Earlier yesterday, more than 350 Greenpeace activists from 15 countries occupied a UK nuclear weapons facility and a plutonium production plant. Greenpeace activists from Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and Korea entered the Aldermaston nuclear weapons factory in Berkshire and the Sellafield plutonium production facility in Cumbria attempting to do what the NPT has so far been unable to do: stop the production of nuclear weapons and fissile materials.
The NPT with its outdated conceptual basis of a two-tiered structure of nations and a discriminatory approach to national security has, in effect, sanctioned the spread of nuclear technology as an inalienable right jeopardizing global security. An indefinite and unamended extension of this treaty will not bring about nuclear disarmament nor will it halt the proliferation of plutonium over our planet.
Unless the international community seriously commits itself to nuclear disarmament and an end to the spread of nuclear technology, the spiral of nuclear proliferation could continue indefinitely. Fifty years after the bombing of Hiroshima, this NPT conference is an opportunity to say, enough is enough. Greenpeace calls States to oppose an indefinite extension of the Treaty. Instead NPT Parties should demand for a series of NPT extension periods linked to a firm and real timetable for nuclear disarmament, and for an end on the production and trade in commercial plutonium.
Best regards
and No Nukes!
Ulf Birgander (Captain)
Bas Bruyne (Campaigner)