wfn.org | NCCCUSA on Nuclear Testing

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the 
U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2252
Email: news@ncccusa.org; Website: www.ncccusa.org

60NCC6/12/98     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STATEMENT ON NUCLEAR TESTING BY INDIA AND PAKISTAN
Issued by:
Bishop Craig B. Anderson, President
The Rev. Dr. Joan B. Campbell, General Secretary
National Council of Churches
June 12, 1998

The National Council of the Churches of Christ in 
the USA (NCCCUSA) recognizes that our own nation, 
the United States, as the largest nuclear power,  
has not yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty signed by 149 nations and already ratified by 
Britain and France.  At the same time the NCCC is 
profoundly concerned  about the emerging nuclear 
arms race in Asia and is deeply distressed by the 
unexpected decision in May, first by India and then 
by Pakistan, to test nuclear weapons. They have 
renewed the prospects for a continued nuclear arms 
race at the very time that efforts for a 
Comprehensive Test Ban seemed within reach. They 
have raised the stakes in any future confrontation 
between India and Pakistan, whose brief history of 
relationships is already marked by three wars and 
ongoing hostility. They have increased tensions in a 
subcontinent already ravaged by recent wars in 
neighboring countries.

These events point to the urgency on the global 
level to develop binding agreements on nuclear, 
chemical, biological and conventional armaments, 
seeking restraint on development, production, sale 
and transfer, so that the existence and trafficking 
of such weapons does not become a stimulus for 
tension and conflict. They also point to the 
necessity of developing alternate security systems 
and effective means of conflict resolution.

The  NCCC urgently calls upon the United States 
Senate to ratify the treaty, thus giving credibility 
to U.S. condemnation of India's and Pakistan's 
nuclear  Commitment by the United States to that 
treaty may provide strong incentive to other nations 
to do the same. Especially now, the United States 
must be clear in its own commitments to honor the 
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by stopping its own 
research and development of nuclear weapons as 
required by that treaty, and to bring into force the 
long delayed ban on all forms of nuclear testing.

The alarming action of India and Pakistan and the 
disturbing lack of the ratification   of the Test 
Ban Treaty by the United States make  it imperative 
for the NCCC to  assert again its long-standing 
opposition to both the development and use of 
nuclear weapons throughout the world.  The  NCCC has 
expressed concern  in earlier resolutions about  the 
global arms race, its cost in human, economic and 
environmental terms, the tragedies involved in the 
numerous local and regional wars that are fed by the 
arms race and the risk of a destructive nuclear 
confrontation which may well reach global 
proportions. In faithfulness to its Christian 
convictions, the NCCC has consistently affirmed that 
all life and all of the earth's resources are gifts 
of God and that all nations are mandated to preserve 
and enhance God's creation, not to abuse and destroy 
it. 

The NCCC has declared that a major concern must be 
to eliminate war as a means of obtaining security. 
We are deeply saddened that India, which shared with 
the world the committed non-violent leadership of 
Mohandas  K. Gandhi  should choose the way of 
nuclear weapons. India's witness to its non-violent 
principles has played a vital role in influencing 
world peace in the last half of this century. 
India's nuclear tests now weaken the example India 
had set for other nations and could easily lead to 
more tragic mistakes which we had hoped the world 
would leave behind..

Pakistan's response to India with its own nuclear 
testing demonstrates that the vaunting of nuclear 
power by any country intensifies the arms race and 
its accompanying economic impoverishment of nations 
and threat of potential destruction. Pakistan's 
response reminds the world that nations lack 
confidence in other forms of security. Therefore the 
NCCC urges all countries, including the USA, to 
participate fully in developing common security and 
non-violent processes of conflict resolution through 
the United Nations to ensure a just peace for  every 
country and peoples. 

-end-

Policy basis: 

Policy Statement adopted by General Board Sept. 12, 
1968: "Defense and 
Disarmament: New Requirements for Security."  
Updated November, 1977.

Policy Statement adopted by Governing Board June 2, 
1960: :  "Toward a Family of Nations Under God - 
Agenda of Action for Peace."
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