Former US Policy Honchos Call For World Free Of Nuclear Arms

Washington (AFP): Four top former US foreign policy officials, including ex-secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, called for a world free of nuclear weapons in an opinion piece Thursday. The article, which appears in the Wall Street Journal, is also signed by former secretary of defense William Perry and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Washington heavyweights say the United States should launch a major effort towards banning all nuclear weapons.

Citing nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, the officials say the world "is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era."

Aside from the threat of terrorists using nuclear weapons, "unless urgent new actions are taken, the US soon will be compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was the Cold War deterrence," they wrote.

In the lengthy article the ex-officials recommend a series of measures that include strong support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other non-proliferation efforts.

But more has to be done, they suggested.

"We believe that a major effort should be launched by the United States to produce a positive answer through concrete stages," they wrote.

Proposed measures include:

- Increasing the launch warning time on deployed nuclear weapons to reduce the danger of an accidental or unauthorized use

- Decreasing the number of nuclear weapons among all nations

- Eliminating short-range nuclear weapons, designed to be deployed with front-line troops

- Providing the highest possible security around the world for all nuclear weapons, weapons-usable plutonium, and highly enriched uranium

- Phasing out the use of highly enriched uranium in civil commerce

- Removing weapons-usable uranium from research facilities around the world.

"Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America's moral heritage," the group wrote.

"Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible," the article reads.

Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford; Shultz, was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan; Perry was secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997 under Bill Clinton; and Nunn was senator from 1972 to 1996.