US Senate urged to ratify new START treaty

In the US, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday pressed the US senate to ratify the new START nuclear treaty by the end of the year.They say that the United States and Russia have not inspected each others’ nuclear arsenals since the old START treaty expired last December, leaving them without the “stability that omes with a rigorous inspection regime”.

Their comments came as Senate leaders weighed whether to ratify the treaty in the final weeks of the “lame duck” congress or to wait for the new year, when passage may be more difficult because of Republican gains in recent elections.

We spoke to vice president of Pax Christi, who says that START is about more than the US and Russia reducing nuclear stockpiles or about keeping tabs on each other. “Most of all, it’s a signal to the wider world, The international court of justice says that there’s an absolute obligation to conduct negotiations aimed at the abolition of nuclear weapons,” he says. “And so, it’s a very significant international treaty, and I certainly hope the Catholic church will join in. [Pope Benedict XVI] has said that nuclear weapons are fallacious and baneful, so I think it’s a highly important moral issue.”