Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Group Opposing Nuclear Weapons - The New York Times - 0 views
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Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Group Opposing Nuclear Weapons
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In a year when the threat of nuclear warfare seemed to draw closer, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to an advocacy group behind the first treaty to prohibit nuclear arms.
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The group, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Geneva-based coalition of disarmament activists, was honored for its efforts to advance the negotiations that led to the treaty, which was reached in July at the United Nations.
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“The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement.
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“an international legal prohibition will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon, and that so far neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies support the nuclear weapon ban treaty.”
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The treaty will go into effect 90 days after 50 United Nations member states have formally ratified it.
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The United States, which with Russia has the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons, had said the treaty would do nothing to alleviate the possibility of nuclear conflict and might even increase it.
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For nuclear-armed nations that choose to join, the treaty outlines a process for destroying stockpiles and enforcing the countries’ promise to remain free of nuclear weapons.
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Under the agreement, all nuclear weapons use, threat of use, testing, development, production, possession, transfer and stationing in a different country are prohibited.
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“I don’t think we have unrealistic expectations that tomorrow nuclear weapons will be gone,” Ms. Fihn said. “But I think this is really a moment to be really inspired that it is possible to do something.”
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Ms. Fihn was more direct in her appraisal of the Kim-Trump standoff and the anxieties it has raised. “Nuclear weapons do not bring stability and security” she told reporters. “We can see that right now.”
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Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, told reporters that “there is no alternative” to nuclear parity to maintain world stability. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
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Proponents of the treaty have said that they never expected any nuclear-armed country would sign it right away. But they argued that the treaty’s widespread acceptance elsewhere would increase the public pressure and stigma of possessing nuclear weapons.
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The same strategy was used by proponents of the treaties that banned chemical and biological weapons, land mines and cluster bombs.
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Russia and China are equally opposed to the efforts to ban nuclear weapons through an international treaty.