arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)
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Destroy your weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Bush! by Greenpeace in Kaiserslautern Sunday, Mar. 21, 2004 at 7:40 PM |
Greenpeace and other activists have put up a statue of liberty outside the US airbase at Ramstein in Germany to protest against war and American weapons of mass destruction. The demonstrators called on the US government to start looking for weapons of mass destruction where they really can be found: in the USA itself.
The six-metre-high statue has a map on it showing the production and storage locations of atomic, chemical and biological weapons in the US.
Greenpeace spokesman Wolfgang Lohbeck said President Bush’s assertions about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction “were nothing but cynical manipulation of public opinion. It had long been decided to go to war."
Greenpeace reminds the owners of weapons of mass destruction, most of all the USA, that they hold a destruction potential of horrifying dimensions.
In the USA are about 7,000 ready-to-use nuclear warheads with another 3,000 in reserve, says Greenpeace. And despite international rules to remove them, the US still holds several thousand tonnes of chemical war agents and biological weapons.
Others in the league of atomic horror arsenals are Russia (more than 8,000 active weapons), China (400), France (350), Great Britain (200), Israel (under 200), as well as India and Pakistan (40 warheads each).
But that’s not where it ends. New types of atomic weapons, called “mini-nukes”, are being developed and are soon to be tested. The USA is also developing new types of chemical weapons, again breaching international law.
Both the very existence of atomic weapons and the resumption of testing are internationally illegal, says Greenpeace. In the 1970 nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty and its supplementary protocols the five “official” nuclear powers have committed to "total elimination of their nuclear arsenals".
This was their payback for other states’ not acquiring nuclear weapons. The very opposite has happened. The nuclear states are continuing to increase their weaponry.
Especially the USA boycotts a great number of other disarmament and humanitarian treaties, including the ban on atomic tests (CTBT), the chemical and biological weapons pact and the ban on anti-personnel mines.
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Media release by the Kaiserslautern Greenpeace Group which welcomes your interest. Members meet Tuesday at 6.30 p.m. in the office at Werkstättestr. 7 (about 5 minutes from Central Station (Hauptbahnhof). Tel. #49/631/310 90 224.
Media inquiries to Wolfgang Lohbeck at tel. #49/0171-87 80 823 or media spokeswoman, Heike Dierbach, at tel. #49/0171 / 87 81 184. Photos are available from the Greenpeace Picture newsroom, tel. #49/40 / 30 618-376. Internet: http://www.greenpeace.de
Jörg Hähn, media spokesman, tel. #49/0170 / 67 38 634
GREENPEACE-Gruppe Kaiserslautern Telephone: #49/631 / 310 90 224
Werkstättestr. 7, 67655 Kaiserslautern
E-Mail: kaiserslautern@greenpeace.de
Internet: http://www.greenpeace.de/kaiserslautern