CND is appalled at the latest reported* BNFL scheme to make a profit at any price.

Their 1999 acquisition, Westinghouse, is taking them down a very slippery, dangerous path. A Westinghouse subsidiary, Westinghouse Savannah River Company, is lobbying the US government hard to get its hands on the lucrative contract to make parts for new so-called "low yield" nuclear weapons.

So BNFL will be directly responsible for helping the US break its treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. All signatories vowed to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to take genuine steps towards nuclear disarmament.

How can making new nuclear weapons be anything but another example of the US (and UK) policy of "Do as I say, not as I do"?

Our government and that of the US are hiding their nuclear hypocrisy under the cloak of loud denunciations of possible nuclear proliferation plans by Iran or North Korea. They hope no-one will notice our own huge nuclear arsenal - the Trident nuclear weapons system.

CND Chair Kate Hudson said: 'Just because they pin the label "low yield" to their newest illegal nukes (which would be called WMDs in anyone else's hands) does not mean that these weapons are somehow target friendly. The term is a marketing ploy to make their actual use more palatable.'

No British owned company should be involved in producing a weapon that would kill thousands immediately and whose radioactive legacy would poison generations to come. No British owned company should be allowed to wreck the NPT and put the whole world at risk of nuclear warfare.

CND calls on the British government:
1. To instruct BNFL to divest itself of the Westinghouse Savannah River Company
2. To declare that it will have no part in plans to develop, produce and test so-called "low yield" nuclear weapons here or in the USA.
3. To begin to honour its treaty commitment to nuclear disarmament before its unsavoury alliance with George Bush drags this country into another war, this time a nuclear one, after which the survivors would envy the dead.

* According to report in Independent on Sunday 2nd November 2003

Ends...//

Notes for Editors
1. For further information or interviews contact CND Press Office – 020-7700-2350 or 07968-420-859 or CND Chair, Kate Hudson 07739 – 184 – 335
2. CND formed in 1958 has expert knowledge on all nuclear issues.
3. CND was the first organisation to campaign against leading the UK to war with Iraq