World churches leader asks for peaceful response to North Korean nuclear test
-09/10/06
World churches leader asks for peaceful response to North Korean nuclear test
-09/10/06
Following news of North Koreas nuclear test, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia has asked for the response from the international community to be peaceful, lawful and collective.
He has also said that the tests were a consequence of a failure of states such as the US and UK to meet their obligations to disarm.
In a letter addressed to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and the UN ambassadors of North Korea and its neighbours, South Korea and Japan, Kobia asked that the crisis be resolved “politically” through negotiations, as well as “legally” by strengthening “the spirit and the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)”.
While acknowledging that any such test was a “new regional threat to world security,” Kobia affirmed that North Korean nuclear testing “must not be allowed to cause a chain reaction” involving other countries in the region.
Kobia acknowledged that the test did indeed add “new urgency to a successful outcome from the Six-Party Talks”. But urged that in the interests of such an outcome, participants should give “due consideration” to North Korea’s concern for its security, while the latter should “abandon its nuclear weapons programme and make a verified return to the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapons state”.
Kobia said he saw the case in point as a “frightening evidence of the permissive erosion of nuclear weapons control,” and as a “dangerous consequence of the failure to meet international political obligations and commitments especially among those governments who have taken up nuclear arms, openly or otherwise”.
The WCC general secretary called on the signatory governments to fulfil their obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and for those outside the treaty to join it as non-nuclear-weapons states. The letter was copied to the ambassadors of India, Pakistan and Israel, three states that have not signed the NPT.
Five nuclear weapons states signatories to the NPT (US, UK, France, Russia and China) are not considered to have implemented agreed disarmament steps and have previously been called upon by the WCC executive committee to accelerate their efforts toward verifiable and irreversible reductions and ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
World churches leader asks for peaceful response to North Korean nuclear test
-09/10/06
Following news of North Koreas nuclear test, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia has asked for the response from the international community to be peaceful, lawful and collective.
He has also said that the tests were a consequence of a failure of states such as the US and UK to meet their obligations to disarm.
In a letter addressed to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and the UN ambassadors of North Korea and its neighbours, South Korea and Japan, Kobia asked that the crisis be resolved “politically” through negotiations, as well as “legally” by strengthening “the spirit and the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)”.
While acknowledging that any such test was a “new regional threat to world security,” Kobia affirmed that North Korean nuclear testing “must not be allowed to cause a chain reaction” involving other countries in the region.
Kobia acknowledged that the test did indeed add “new urgency to a successful outcome from the Six-Party Talks”. But urged that in the interests of such an outcome, participants should give “due consideration” to North Korea’s concern for its security, while the latter should “abandon its nuclear weapons programme and make a verified return to the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapons state”.
Kobia said he saw the case in point as a “frightening evidence of the permissive erosion of nuclear weapons control,” and as a “dangerous consequence of the failure to meet international political obligations and commitments especially among those governments who have taken up nuclear arms, openly or otherwise”.
The WCC general secretary called on the signatory governments to fulfil their obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and for those outside the treaty to join it as non-nuclear-weapons states. The letter was copied to the ambassadors of India, Pakistan and Israel, three states that have not signed the NPT.
Five nuclear weapons states signatories to the NPT (US, UK, France, Russia and China) are not considered to have implemented agreed disarmament steps and have previously been called upon by the WCC executive committee to accelerate their efforts toward verifiable and irreversible reductions and ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals.