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Statements Archive |
LAST UPDATE
August 4, 2005
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| August 3, 2005 |
Northeast Asian Citizens Call on the Six-Party Talk for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone |
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NGO leaders from Northeast Asia, namely South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and Mongolia, and the US, have jointly issued a statement at the Untied Nations to call on the governments of the region for a peaceful resolution to the nuclear crisis over North Korea prior to the resumed Six-Party Talk scheduled on next Tuesday. The statement was sent to all six government missions to the UN on July 22, 2005.
The statement calls for “an immediate, peaceful and irreversible resolution” through “the DPRK’s complete dismantlement of its nuclear weapons’ program and its return to the NPT regime on the one hand, and the abandonment by the United States of its hostile policy against the DPRK, including a security assurance.”
It also calls for the denuclearization of Korean Peninsula based on the 1992 Joint Declaration in which the two Koreas had agreed to nuclear-free status. It further declares, “We are committed to strengthen our efforts to work towards a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Northeast Asia.”
The NGO leaders recognized that the crisis was “a symptom of the Cold War structures that remain in Northeast Asia” and emphasized the need to strengthen regional cooperation among the states, including normalization between the US and North Korea and between Japan and North Korea. In this context, it warned of Japan’s trend towards re-militarization and revision of Article 9 of its Constitution.
The statement was created at the occasion of the UN Conference of Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), which provided a unique opportunity for key peace and security oriented NGOs in Northeast Asia, including Korea, Japan, and China, to get together to discuss their agenda for peace and disarmament. At the end of the Conference on July 21, 2005 the NGOs agreed to create a platform, on which to continue working for denuclearization and peacebuilding in the region. The statement declared their intention “to launch a Civil Society Forum in parallel to the Six-Party Talks” to explore“innovative and flexible approaches that are needed for the realization of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Northeast Asia.”
The 19 signatories of the Statement included: Professor Shim Young-Hee, Co-representative of Women Making Peace, South Korea; Yoshioka Tatsuya, Director of Peace Boat, Japan; Niu Qiang, Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament, Beijing; Enkhsaikhan Jargalsaikhan, former Ambassador of Mongolia to the UN; Jacqueline Cabasso, Director of Western States Legal Foundation, the US; and Vadim Gaponenko from Maritime State University, Vladivostok, Russia. The Statement will be further endorsed and circulated for advocacy purposes in each state in the lead up to the intergovernmental “Six-Party Talks” to be held in Beijing from July 26, 2005. >>read more |
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