India will push to make poverty eradication, ‘without any qualifiers,’ the centre-piece of the development framework post-2015, the stated deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), at the 68th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Session in New York next week. These goals were adopted by all member-states of the …
India will push to make poverty eradication, ‘without any qualifiers,’ the centre-piece of the development framework post-2015, the stated deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), at the 68th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Session in New York next week. These goals were adopted by all member-states of the …
London-based groups protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) have pledged to widen their campaign across Europe, as several British MPs voiced their concerns about the plant and the way protestors have been treated, ahead of a protest outside the Indian embassy in London on Friday. “We want to …
The Obama administration will hold two days of meetings with North Korea next week in a bid to resume a nuclear-disarmament process with Pyongyang that foundered in 2008. The meetings come as North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed a renewed interest this week in negotiating with the U.S. and …
Pakistan has urged "some major powers" to commence negotiations on the larger issue of nuclear disarmament instead of pushing for a treaty to ban production of fissile material used as fuel for atomic weapons, saying the treaty was a limited non-proliferation goal. Speaking in the General Assembly's main committee, Raza …
Indian intransigence at WTO negotiations irked New Zealand to the extent that it became a trenchant critic of the Indo-US nuclear deal, suggests a WikiLeaks cable. The international whistleblower has documents from the US embassy in New Zealand suggesting that quite apart from the country’s non-proliferation concerns, disarmament minister Phil …
Despite the protection afforded by several important legal instruments, the environment continues to be the silent victim of armed conflicts worldwide. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has conducted over twenty post-conflict assessments since 1999, using state-of-the-art science to determine the environmental impacts of war. From Kosovo to Afghanistan, Sudan …
The accession of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States is an opportune time to revisit the issue of global and regional nuclear disarmament. What are the options open to civil society? The two routes to global and regional disarmament are obviously connected but not in a manner …
Under-scoring the need for total elimination of nuclear weapons, Pakistan told a UN panel on Wednesday that the objective should be achieved through an equitable approach and genuine empathy for the security concerns of all states. At the same time, Ambassador Farukh Amil said. We have to avoid discriminatory application …
In the first of three features on the legacy of the Bush administration, Declan Butler looks at the United States' failure to deal with the risks of nuclear proliferation.
Recently, I met some senior British diplomats. Conversation moved to the impending war in Iraq and its "rationality". It became heated. I wish to share a piece of Bushspeak the discussion ended with, leaving me stunned. "Remember, there will be war. The us wants it. But if you are with …
India continued to play hard to get at the just concluded Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva. Its stance that the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) does not impress upon the nuclear powers to work firmly towards nuclear disarmament and at the same time seeks the rest of the world's …
exposing the double-talk of the five nuclear states, especially the us, requires little doing; the recently concluded Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (ctbt) in Geneva offered a remarkable instance. The five nuclear powers
The Iraqi government is finally coming clean on its secret biological weapons programme. Rolf Ekeus, the un official in charge of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, informed the world community on July 1 that the authorities have provided classified information on the country's biological arsenal. Especially the whereabouts of …
Speculation about the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt) came to a suffocating halt as the Review and Extension Conference on the treaty concluded in New York on May 12. In a repeat show of power, the 5 nuclear bosses -- the us, Russia, the uk, France and China …
Peace may yet return to Mexico. Mexican rebels from the troubled southern state of Chiapas have signalled their willingness to bury the hatchet and strike truce with the federal government. The Zapatista National Liberation Army, in a statement dated March 24, appealed for talks on "politiCal, social, cultural and economic …
