Nuclear Disarmament

PARIS -- The firearm arrived in Japan in 1543, brought by Europeans. The Japanese quickly adopted it and put it to use in their clan wars.In 1607 the gunsmiths of Japan were assembled by imperial order. They were told they could henceforth produce firearms only on government authorization. Two years later they were given an annual subsidy not to make firearms. By the early 18th century the entire national small-arms production consisted of 35 large matchlocks and 250 small ones, ordered by the government in alternate years.

GENEVA -- Diplomatic wrangling over the long-awaited Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has become dangerously prolonged. The goal is to have the text wound up by next month, for U.N. General Assembly approval and a formal signing in September. Now it seems this timetable may slip.Ever since Washington and Moscow, the two principal nuclear powers, threw their joint weight behind the indefinite renewal of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty last year, it was accepted that a major part of the quid pro quo arrangement with the non-nuclear powers was deliverance of a test-ban treaty.

LONDON -- America doesn't need enemies abroad when it has patriots at home like Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sees every step toward a more peaceful and law-abiding world, if internationally brokered, as an attempt to choke America's own freedom. So the Chemical Weapons Treaty must be stopped.Mr. Helms' earlier targets included the Law of the Sea Treaty, a well-crafted, hard-bargained text for unmaking the lawlessness of the seas and oceans, whose imperative has just been underlined again by the wrangling between Beijing and Tokyo over a group of oil-rich, off-shore islands to which they both assert ownership.

THE AWARD of the Nobel Prize for Peace to Joseph Rotblat and to the Pugwash Copnferences on Science and World Affairs delivers a powerful message: Nuclear proliferation remains a danger that survived the Cold War and must be addressed.Campaigners for nuclear disarmament won Nobel Peace Prizes in 1962 and in 1985. This third award shows arms control and nonproliferation are still vivid in the world's imagination.The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee called the award "a sort of protest against testing of nuclear weapons and nuclear arms in general."

HIROSHIMA, Japan -- Japanese officials are planning to mark the 50th anniversary of the obliteration of Hiroshima by calling today for bans on nuclear testing and nuclear weapons."

Vienna, Austria -- If Saddam Hussein had succeeded in building a nuclear weapon, a U.S. president would not have launched ''Desert Storm.'' There would have been at most an economic embargo and the threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons if Iraq dared use its.The near miss with Saddam Hussein has made all the present nuclear-haves determined to hold on to their nuclear weapons. It is a policy of questionable wisdom.By holding onto their large arsenals long after the Cold War's end the nuclear-haves forfeit arguments of morality, self-discipline and symmetry in seeking to dissuade would-be nuclear powers.

Jumping the GunThe Sun's Nov. 7 pre-election front-page story, "GOP seems poised to take control of House, Senate," is a textbook example of how the media mishandle politics. Two cardinal sins were committed.First, the headline's large type and prominent placement created the impression that the election results were already known before the polls had opened.If every paper in the country ran a headline as speculative as this one, then many voters already indifferent to their civic privilege would probably feel justified in not voting.

MOSCOW -- Here in Russia, politicians describe their nation's changing relationship with Ukraine as a friendly embrace growing pleasantly warmer.Ukrainians, however, look northward and see Russian arms open for a bear hug that can lead only toward suffocation.In agreeing to nuclear disarmament -- in a document to be signed here today -- Ukraine's President Leonid Kravchuk was accepting the inevitable:Ukraine gets money from the United States to avert economic disaster and cheap fuel from Russia to keep its power plants running, but Russia gets the upper hand.

President Bush has every right to feel gratified by the giant steps on nuclear disarmament that have occurred on his watch, the culmination being the START I and II treaties to reduce superpower strategic arsenals by two-thirds in the next decade. He has every right, too, to hope President-elect Clinton does not make the mistake he committed early in his administration by letting diplomacy with Moscow lag to the detriment of a detente-minded, democracy-minded Russian leader.In Mr. Bush's case, the delay stemmed from a perverse "status-quo plus" strategy that helped undermine the position of former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

AT THE Republican convention, President Bush grandly said, "I saw the chance to rid our children's dreams of the nuclear nightmare, and I did!"It seemed a bold boast, but a moment's thought showed evasiveness in the phrasing. The Cold War had unquestionably ended, and the nuclear peril had unquestionably been diminished.The strategic arsenals of the two superpowers, however, were still intact. Agreements to cut them back were near completion, but These, even when carried out, would reduce nuclear arsenals by only two-thirds.

LIMA, Peru - President George W. Bush arrived in South America yesterday for the final scheduled foreign trip of his presidency, hoping to bolster confidence in efforts to rescue the global economy and move forward on North Korean nuclear disarmament. The 21 member nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, whose summit Bush is attending, account for nearly half of all global trade and 55 percent of the world's gross domestic product, reflecting in part the ascendance of East Asia and China.

Where is outcry over suffering of Palestinians? It is quite disturbing when sophisticated minds such as Alan M. Dershowitz have to lament in the name of peace about the treatment of a few Israeli academic institutions (three in all, including Haifa University, which may have direct ties with illegal Israeli settlements) being boycotted by the British Association for University Teachers (AUT) ("Anti-Semitic boycott hurts peace process," Opinion Commentary, May 1), when they fail to decry the fate of millions of Palestinian souls still living under occupation after more than 40 years.

WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has united the world against the spread of nuclear weapons for 35 years and has permitted only one defector - North Korea. Today, this important security system is mired in such discord that it is in danger of crumbling. As envoys from around the world meet this month in New York to review the NPT, North Korea is ratcheting up the pressure with a militarily meaningless but politically pointed missile test. Iran enters the meeting with threats to end its suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that can make fuel for nuclear reactors but also for bombs.

SYMBOLS LONG have been rallying points for political, religious and social causes. They are particularly important at times of moral crisis. Throughout history, various images have been used to bring together people, rally support, allay fears and soothe suffering. Since Sept. 11, the one symbol most evident has been the Stars and Stripes. More Americans are flying it, wearing it and placing it on their cars and trucks than at any time in history. We have now come to expect to see it on nearly every highway overpass.

CHICAGO -- You would think that 10 years after the end of the Cold War, the United States would be doing everything it could to get Russia to reduce its bloated, aging and dangerous arsenal of approximately 6,000deployed strategic nuclear warheads. You would be wrong. In fact, as revealed in official documents obtained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and released recently, U.S. negotiators have sought to allay Russian fears about a possible U.S. national missile defense system by ruling out any future reductions in strategic nuclear warheads below the 1,500-2,000 level and encouraging Russia to maintain its nuclear forces on constant alert.

PARIS -- The firearm arrived in Japan in 1543, brought by Europeans. The Japanese quickly adopted it and put it to use in their clan wars.In 1607 the gunsmiths of Japan were assembled by imperial order. They were told they could henceforth produce firearms only on government authorization. Two years later they were given an annual subsidy not to make firearms. By the early 18th century the entire national small-arms production consisted of 35 large matchlocks and 250 small ones, ordered by the government in alternate years.

LONDON -- America doesn't need enemies abroad when it has patriots at home like Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sees every step toward a more peaceful and law-abiding world, if internationally brokered, as an attempt to choke America's own freedom. So the Chemical Weapons Treaty must be stopped.Mr. Helms' earlier targets included the Law of the Sea Treaty, a well-crafted, hard-bargained text for unmaking the lawlessness of the seas and oceans, whose imperative has just been underlined again by the wrangling between Beijing and Tokyo over a group of oil-rich, off-shore islands to which they both assert ownership.

GENEVA -- Diplomatic wrangling over the long-awaited Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has become dangerously prolonged. The goal is to have the text wound up by next month, for U.N. General Assembly approval and a formal signing in September. Now it seems this timetable may slip.Ever since Washington and Moscow, the two principal nuclear powers, threw their joint weight behind the indefinite renewal of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty last year, it was accepted that a major part of the quid pro quo arrangement with the non-nuclear powers was deliverance of a test-ban treaty.

THE AWARD of the Nobel Prize for Peace to Joseph Rotblat and to the Pugwash Copnferences on Science and World Affairs delivers a powerful message: Nuclear proliferation remains a danger that survived the Cold War and must be addressed.Campaigners for nuclear disarmament won Nobel Peace Prizes in 1962 and in 1985. This third award shows arms control and nonproliferation are still vivid in the world's imagination.The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee called the award "a sort of protest against testing of nuclear weapons and nuclear arms in general."

HIROSHIMA, Japan -- Japanese officials are planning to mark the 50th anniversary of the obliteration of Hiroshima by calling today for bans on nuclear testing and nuclear weapons."