The News on Nukes

by Frida Berrigan

It's not on the front pages of what is left of U.S. newspapers. The headlines are dominated by violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, by Miss America's semi-nude photo scandal, and by the Chrysler fiasco. But just about everyone who is anyone is talking about nuclear weapons this week. At the United Nations, representatives from the world's 190 or so nations are meeting (in typical fashion) to prepare to meet. The preparatory meeting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is taking place the first two weeks of May to get ready for the Review Conference of the Treaty, which will happen next year. Closer to home this week, Congress heard from its Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. And the Department of Energy released its budget for 2010 requesting $6.4 billion for nuclear weapons programs out of an overall budget of $26.4 billion. In all of this nuclear attention, there is good, bad and mixed news, all of which is taking place against the background of President Barack Obama's historic Prague speech, in which he pledged to work for a world free of nuclear weapons. The president also identified immediate, concrete measures toward that goal, including negotiating a new treaty with Russia involving deep cuts in our respective nuclear arsenals; seeking ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); accelerating spending designed to eliminate "loose nukes" and bomb-making materials (plutonium and enriched uranium) in Russia and beyond; and ending all new production of bomb-making materials worldwide.

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