Labour urges Key to push disarmament cause

  • Breaking
  • 24/03/2014

Labour is calling on Prime Minister John Key to make his mark at the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands by pushing the cause of nuclear disarmament.

The third biennial summit to control the spread of nuclear materials and reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism began at The Hague overnight.

Mr Key has attended all three summits after being invited to the first by US President Barack Obama, thanks to New Zealand's strong record on nuclear disarmament.

Labour's disarmament spokesperson Maryan Street says Mr Key should use the platform to push for further disarmament.

"Of course no one wants nuclear-capable material falling into the hands of terrorist groups, and that's a legitimate purpose for the summit," she said on Firstline this morning.

"But there's an opportunity to do more than that – it's an opportunity actually to advance the disarmament agenda."

Ms Street says much progress has been made in recent years – for example the US and Russia dramatically cutting their stockpiles – but nuclear weapons need to be eliminated completely, just to be sure.

"Our nuclear weapons of current-day strength – which are so much more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War – if even one of those were to be detonated, the environmental and the humanitarian catastrophe that would follow would be something the world could not recover from," she says.

She's encouraging Mr Key to use New Zealand's significant standing in the world community on nuclear issues to persuade world leaders to cut their stockpiles even further.

"We are nuclear-free by law, and there aren't many countries around the world who can stand up and say that."

Mr Key so far has had brief, informal meetings with Mr Obama, chatting about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and German leader Angela Merkel, with whom he spoke about a potential trade agreement with the European Union.

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source: newshub archive