Disarmament Efforts Quotes

Barack Obama has injected fresh momentum into efforts - stalled for a decade - to bring about nuclear disarmament.

We must unite to make nuclear weapons a horror of the past.

I was involved with the landmines before the Princess of Wales, and nobody gave a damn about people losing their limbs. It only became a success when she came along.

In the spirit of commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we will strive to achieve real progress in disarmament and arms control.

But beyond all that, the question that is continually begged is why isn't America leading the way toward total abolition of nuclear weapons.

This would be a very good moment to institute a call for imposing the Chemical Weapons Convention on the Middle East. The actual Chemical Weapons Convention. Not the version that [Barack] Obama presented in his address to the nation and that media commentators repeat. What he said is that the convention bars the use of chemical weapons. He knows better. And so do the commentators. The Chemical Weapons Convention calls for banning the production, storage and use of chemical weapons, not just the use. So why omit production and storage?

How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?

The United States found dozens of billions of dollars for military action in Iraq, so it should certainly be able to find a few billions of dollars to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. I'll assume that since the most powerful nation - the United States - has promised to pay for much of this, then its word will be kept. If it isn't, I don't think we can have a true partnership.

We want to approach this in a multilateral way, talking with our friends, consulting with our security council colleagues in the United Nations, hoping to find a way to solve this peacefully, but at the same time recognising that unless the threat of military force is there, Iraq will not disarm.

I will continue to forcefully support nonproliferation activities around the world.

But the nuclear powers still cling tenaciously to their weapons.

if we pursue the arms race no other problem will be solved.

Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security.

The institutions founded 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' have failed. Since the end of WW2, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians.

It’s impossible to say who has guns in Gaza anymore. The ballots are the only thing that can stop the violence at this point.

The one effective step which has been taken in the past few years towards the reduction of armaments has been the Washington Conference, with which the League of Nations had no concern, and by which a material diminution in the standing navies of the principal naval Powers was obtained and a limit was put to the costly process of competitive shipbuilding.

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence-Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.

Nuclear disarmament is one of the greatest legacies we can pass on to future generations.

The reality is that Qaddafi has been trying to talk to us about his weapons system for years, and we ignored him. The Libyans even came to me about two years ago and offered me a chance to go through their facilities because they couldn't get anybody's attention here.

Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations.

The number of nuclear bombs on the planet today - the sheer quantity of weapons of mass destruction in the possession of people and governments throughout the world - along with the fact that the use of brute force and militarism is an almost knee-jerk way of problem-solving on the planet today, makes the eradication of war the great moral issue of this generation.

We cannot by ourselves reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, but we are doing what has to be done all over the world if those weapons are one day to be eliminated. We will not contemplate any circumstance in which their possession or threatened use is justified. We reject the secrecy and hypocrisy which surrounds the continuing refinement of the technology.

What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs.

We should be hell bent on getting those weapons of mass destruction, hell bent on having a credible approach to them, but we should try to do it in a way which keeps the world together and that achieves our goal which is removing the... defanging Saddam.