The two and a half days second meeting on nuclear disarmament organized by nine French associations members of the international network “Abolition 2000” with the support of the town of Vénissieux gathered 200 participants. The purpose was to encourage the elimination and abolition of nuclear weapons; among them there were representatives of pacifist movements from Japan, USA, Great Britain and the NGOs UN office.

This meeting enabled to pinpoint the contradictions between the legal obligations for nuclear disarmement provided by article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty as reminded by the International Court of The Hague in 1996 and by the NPT Review Conference of May 19 in New York and the report of the continuation of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Actually, on the one hand we can observe an increase in already nuclearized countries arsenals and on the other hand nuclear weapons equipment projects in several non-nuclearized countries (North Korea and Iran).

The organizing associations who opposed to nuclear weapons wanted these two days meeting to be a moment of exchange on current issues:

•  How can we eliminate nuclear weapons without resorting to preventive wars, as the US are presently advising?

•  Which are the new weapons developed by the nuclear countries and which are the new military strategies?

•  What kind of relation does exist between civilian nuclear energy and the proliferation of nuclear weapons?

•  What kind of health problems do the civilian and military people concerned by nuclear tests face?

•  What kind of international cooperation can be developed for a true nuclear weapons elimination agenda?

The main outcome of NDD (JDN) is the decision to launch a national and international campaign for a new mobilization of the public opinion in order to obtain the elimination of nuclear weapons in view of the NPT Review in May 2005 at the UN.

In the context of this campaign, three additional initiatives have been created:

•  Supporting the Mayor of Hiroshima and the “Mayors for Peace” campaign for a program of all nuclear weapons elimination by 2020

•  Campaigning all over Europe to urge France, Britain and Europe to make proposals for nuclear disarmement by 2005

•  An information campaign of debates and events aimed to raise the French public opinion on the elimination of nuclear weapons. A protest against the new military nuclear equipment and against the increase in the defence budget.

The participants in the second nuclear disarmament meeting ask all citizens to debate actively on nuclear disarmament issues and thus put pressure on their leaders to engage in true nuclear disarmement so as to get to the next meetings of the NPT in 2004 and 2005 with good results.

Vénissieux, 26 th October 2003