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PRESS RELEASE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF CND: 50 MPs WELCOME GLOBAL SUMMIT THIS WEEKEND12 February 2008: for immediate release Over 50 MPs have signed a Commons motion in support of this weekend’s Global Summit for a Nuclear Weapon Free World, hosted by CND to mark its 50th anniversary [text in note 2]. This will bring together figures from across the spectrum. Sergio Duarte, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs will be speaking, as will President Clinton’s nuclear advisor Thomas Graham, now working with Henry Kissinger to promote new disarmament talks. CND is also welcoming campaigners from across the world, including Bianca Jagger, together with leading activists from Israel, Indian, Pakistan, the US, France and elsewhere. The Summit will also hear from a survivor from the Hiroshima atom bomb. The Summit, held this Saturday and Sunday in London's City Hall and opened by Mayor Ken Livingstone, is set to be the most significant international conference on nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War. It will draw together leading diplomatic, scientific and policy experts with anti-nuclear activists from around the world. In two days of plenary and working group discussions, they will focus on creating the conditions for abolishing nuclear weapons, with the aim of promoting negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would outlaw nuclear weapons as chemical and biological weapons have been outlawed. Government representatives have been invited and the conference outcomes will be communicated to the Prime Minister and his advisor on nuclear proliferation, Shirley Williams. Over the last month both the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have focussed on the need for renewed efforts at achieving reductions in global nuclear stockpiles. Interviews with speakers are available between Friday and Monday and include:
Kate Hudson, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said, “As part of the events marking the 50th anniversary of CND, the Global Summit will bring together delegates from across the globe with the aim of laying the groundwork towards negotiating a global ban on these terrible weapons. To some that may be a distant dream, but it was exactly this kind of vision that allowed the ban on landmines to be rapidly negotiated several years ago.” She continued: “This weekend, exactly half a century since Bertrand Russell and others addressed our founding meeting, will help bring us closer to the day when governments begin substantive negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention.”
Date: Saturday and Sunday 16-17 February 2008 CND supporters, amongst them survivors from the Hiroshima bomb, will also be gathering at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston on Easter Monday, 24th March for a mass protest on the half-century anniversary of the first march to Aldermaston. ends Notes to Editors:
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