QUOTES
New
Zealand's nuclear free movement is a broad-based and popular movement. Our nuclear
free status is a challenge to much that is accepted as orthodox in international
relations. It was formally adopted in the cold war era as a form of resistance
to the dismal doctrines of nuclear deterrence. It is still a rebuke to the unprincipled
exercise of economic power and military might.
Our
nuclear free status means that we decline to acquiesce in the strategies of nuclear
deterrence. We will not turn a blind eye to them, and pretend that the weapons
are no longer a threat. We will not in any way tolerate the testing of nuclear
weapons, or their manufacture, or their deployment.
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.
Our
nuclear free status is a statement of our belief that we and our fellow human
beings can build the institutions which will one day allow us all to renounce
the weapons of mass destruction. We are a small country and what we can do is
limited. But in this as in every other great issue, we have to start somewhere.
