back here with a reminder of the top stories top u.n. officials call in the security council to pressure the syrian government while saying the armed opposition is stepping up its attacks which must tell this as another massacre pulls the country closer to civil war with do you want observers still unable to verify the details be atrocities. residencies and small irish town go back to their old currency to save businesses from collapse as more people fear the eurozone we had down the drain that's in the report they will need at least forty billion dollars in bailout money to boost its crisis headbands. the euro twenty takes off

later was scammell as several european governments boycott the championships they say they are concerned about for human rights records and race discrimination at club level in a host poland and ukraine and will not attend the games in protest. well if there are special report about the survivors of a nuclear bombing status for that. the follow up from the french test went beyond the polynesian islands they caused outrage in new zealand which took the lead in the n.t. nuclear movement and became a black sheep among western countries yes unlike any other country new zealand refused to rely on nuclear weapons for its security but here nuclear technology is banned it's the law. i think a lot of the young people feel proud about new zealand especially for a policy that people have come of complacent and feel that as foreign we're safe

there are these other issues you know i mean a lot of people don't say people in the peace movement as happy seven out of me as gray beards resounds and but that's what people say. even in new zealand it's difficult to find young people concerned about this issue they're more sensitive to the melting of the antarctic and he wants to revitalize the ageing pacifist movement when i'm working at peace foundation in my role is to use outreach coordinator. in the race and they are going to tell you see to the pacific you fist of all and basing all these amazing people from twenty seven different countries in the pacific and i felt for the first time in my life that new zealand was not remote and that we were big compared to. so things out the pacific garden country. i was brought up on the higher the peace activist mother she's been around during

peace activist the last thirty years so it's in my blood and i feel a responsibility to continue that when. i have this funny memory of mum buying me a greenpeace sticker that you put on your window and it was of the rainbow warrior and the fact that terrorism could somehow harbor on a party that was on a peaceful mission and really sort of show choir here living in a safe. trey i think it's the younger generation that teaching the next generation the legacy of hope really that i think that we have given young people especially on our politics twenty is it's we actually passed a law and we want to young people to know about the law because any was only four when the law was passed. and the old time. the existing was with us. and that's. what. i feel

is. that they were. the first. thing they knew that if all. listening to the stories of people like mum and peacemakers in israel and in the work that they've done gives me hope and i think that i've seen what ordinary citizens can do and make a difference and i feel that i can contribute to prevent the young people from feeling a sense of powerlessness pacifist remind them of the long crusade that made their country nuclear free and under neither confirm or deny you can feel the pride in me that we had governments and politicians prepared to go on those boats to go out there and actually protest i mean it was something we did as ordinary citizens working with governments you've got a partnership model there that is unusual i think right around the world you know with little to notice it took another twelve years to get along a government that actually ran on the nuclear ticket and won. and then it was

consolidated by the stupidity of the french. thinking that they would somehow stop this problem. but bombing the robot warrior and what it did instead was absolutely cemented it hope it's not just great and it's important to remember that the british and australia on aboriginal lamed the fallout that came from near actually came over to new zealand not just from what was happening by the french into even. the british preceded the french in the pacific beginning in one nine hundred fifty two they tested their way into the very restricted. by the u.s.s.r. . with the assistance of the australian and new zealand military. museum to spiritual study that's just come up the results demonstrated the presence of elevated chromosomal disturbances of new zealand veterans in the fifty years ago so

they're basically saying they have suffered damage and we spoke recently national conference here on disarmament when the daughter of one of the nuclear test veterans spoke out her father was too old to speak and she talked about growing up with that fear of having i try to food even in new zealand because of the effects of radiation from. exposed to nuclear tests on the pacific. and i'm lucky. i have three children. and i don't live with the. i was so it was normal until i got disco and sit on the met and go around so i would appear. and most of the kids would say i'm up as a take. and they're not so i am i'm trying to stop nuclear. because

that's how i understood. crop crane as an example command her now working at the disarmament security center. back in the one nine hundred seventy s. when i was in the submarine helicopters i was required to train my air crew in using this new to a depth bomb which we were given. if we ever had to release it. from a helicopter we could not escape before it doesn't it and so it was a suicide mission i asked a few questions i was reassured that we probably would never really have to use it it shocked me but i was ambitious no one else was complaining and we were told that this is the only way that britain could keep her independence but i realize that.

only later many years later that. this was completely untrue. as a new convert against nuclear weapons i was looked upon with great score by the. peace movement in britain i tried to explain that i was not a psychopath my friends we are psychopaths and we are professional military men. who thought very deeply about what we did but i did agree with them the nuclear weapon aspect was an aberration. or a big. and they had planes finger on the phone he had a conscience to do something about these and i can't imagine you going around its merits. largest carrier major and i see him so that now so passionate about what he does that it's just. said nother rob well it's the ultimate cautionary tale but what they say is nothing like call of it. the always tend to overdo it

because you really understand you know which of what is being proposed the pentagon and others will say oh don't worry we have everyone well trained we have plenty of safety systems there can not be a accidental start of a nuclear war but nuclear weapons are built to be used the risk is not zero that something might be going off by mistake specially with the thousands of nuclear weapons on had trigger alert in the us and in russia in the united states they have dropped i think it's eleven atomic bombs accidentally. we dropped four off of spain we have dropped one nuclear weapon in a marsh here in the united states now and still there has never found the nuclear

nucular weapons are such a huge issue with such high risks associated with them that there's a natural tendency to play both sides. they say they're cutting back but at the same time they maintain extremely high numbers of weapons. and i was given the number of near misses we are lucky to still be here right the activists are convinced that an accident is pending ok but i and that the only valid security system is the total abolition of nuclear weapons in ninety six when we began the swell project idea there was the strain if you say i'm going to clean it with friends and legal then everyone else in the world could do it by going to the world court we could get the conscience of the ordinary citizen around the world saying these are against the moral conscience of people it's illegal to use nuclear weapon tomorrow and the dream was that it would be easy to get it through the u.n. and. they were of course and that eventually these weapons would be declared

illegal as we had done in our own country and thank goodness that we were dreamers and i'm realistic and. that that we were both stood by the sense of hope that this could happen but the real sources of international law apart from treaties customary international law and the general principles of law recognized by the legal systems of the world. that by categorical on the banning of nuclear weapons on the legality of nuclear weapons the fact that nuclear weapons cannot be used either by way of a strike or by way of threat you know the most the. threat or use of force. by means of nuclear weapons and that is going to lead to article two brother of all of the united nations charter and article fifty one is unlawful. nucular deterrence says we have

nuclear weapons but our goal is not to use them if they. use our goal is to have them at our disposal and. this means that we are not in the realm of the real we are in the realm of the virtual need don't know what you're in here to and it is contrary to international law even to have in one's acidulous this weapon because the purpose of the weapon is to use it as a threat or as an actual weapon the nuclear powers are alliances like nato still rely on nuclear deterrence which is threat and so the fight continues i was on a panel with a senior advisor to the british government about nuclear policy and he's pro nuclear. and we were debating about. the world court opinion and whether nuclear deterrence was legal and he was extremely cynical he said that

. it was a mistake to have gone to the court but governments would ignore it and that's true they have. and the other thing he relied on all the time was he said and of course we never actually will have to use them and this to me is the heart of the problem for the people who brought you to terms is that if they try to emulate we use names terms doesn't work that we're meant we would argue that terence does mean use absolute is a use of a nuclear weapon to actually threaten to use them and that's when you into the will cause the first time you've fought to get that threet yeah and this isn't it it was the south pacific noirs and the activists that argued to have threesome clued in their original question if you have included threats then the. nuclear states could valued well we're only relying to terence which is threat and so we're not going to use so i waited for him. to from here is it going to go back to the

court rules which are. at the time the judges agreed unanimously on the requirement for total nuclear disarmament the activists are fighting ted that opinion on and. is based on. what i understand that the lawyers and others wanting to do is to use the unanimous part of the opinion and i wanted to say to new zone how can we make that stronger how can we you know what are they doing that state practice that is still illegal. is that your understanding of it is i mean that they're looking for some new lever to put more pressure on the equip states to comply and design completely not just to reduce. yes on nuclear weapons in fact it's reverse since the world court decision the americans particularly have come out and said that. they see new roles for nuclear weapons

and so we're back to almost like a sort of cold war situation again but with the war on terror instead and so it's going to be far more difficult to get governments to put their heads over the parapet the nonproliferation treaty does provide a framework for ending the threat of destruction species for the greater work and the signing sign or states they agreed to take good faith effort to a limited nuclear weapons none of them lived up to that and now of course we focus on well asians by others those who like policemen on the word scene i'm talking of the nuclear powers they're violating this very law which they want other countries to observe now what if a policeman violates the law he cannot expect the rest of the hood to complain but the law of the only thing that would work would be one that is perceived to be nondiscriminatory and fair and equally applying to all countries one

approach that has followed these days is you know dividing the worry between friends court and court good countries and court and court bad or rogue countries or evil to do with that approach doesn't work it doesn't take too much to remember that in the one nine hundred eighty s. dabble sand in iraq was a friend of the west. presumably still on intelligence agencies that the invasion of iraq would spur nuclear proliferation and terror. for good reasons these are the only means of deterrent. and nobody's going to turn the united states where the u.s. spends about as much as the rest of the world. go through spending so the only way it isn't deterring a. nuclear weapon and target. the activists are understandably anxious

as a result of the nuclear posture review in this classified u.s. military document the security guarantees that protected countries without nuclear weapons against a nuclear offensive are cancelled a strategy of action is being adopted in addition to deterrence so the arsenals must be upgraded to make them easier to use france and britain have responded with surprising enthusiasm to this nuclear renaissance that the united kingdom is going to pretend that it needs nuclear weapons for its survival or its security who is attacking the united kingdom so i have got the very strange idea that because there's terrorists in the world we need to have nuclear weapons can be used nuclear weapons against terrorists but it would that not be rather like shooting musk eaters with chemicals so i think the british would make a much bigger splash in the history of the world if they decided that they let the program expire we are still fighting the

polio war between britain and france because when i finally cornered. any senior british military man these days and ask him why do you need nuclear weapons they say every time it's nothing to do with security it's nothing to do with the russians it's to do with the french we cannot allow france to be the only european nuclear power. and there is this fear that britain will become like resilient if they're going to be free they will be of no consequence in the world. even though i do this work i constantly get overwhelmed i mean that discussion that we were having talking about the reality of next here we pins on the streets sometimes i just want i just i've had enough. and lose heart but at the

same time i think. something has to be time and a five minute position that i can do something i what. i mean now parents generation they go out. and doing. that now. because the mothers the young people i speak to a movie i go out there. they also for different names are interested in some european nations who can sign because in a way. that belonging encourages much comes from that live sort of active projects go on and people solidarity emerges from it which i don't think exists so much among young people that it might it just as possible. before the invasion of iraq there were millions of people protesting and still you know there's a million people around and i'm curious and went to washington so i mean it's not necessarily it's you've got to convince the public so you may get all the parts and

suddenly we're going to be. here we're going to be here and what i think we really are doing to our country and i think they mobilize action that would occur would be huge massive here like no one's taking away any piece moment because it's kind of the feeling is still there the kind of pace. so there. and i was so i think a lot of young people that are much more interested in some of these issues but not complacent and they're overwhelmed by all of us here but the maybe. we don't listen to because the peace movement can say to humanity you know if you keep spending a trillion dollars a year on weapons of venture you're going to blow everybody up you know people are dying from these weapons but until we actually see it people don't don't wake up to it. in two thousand and six canadian activists trying to drum up public interest in nuclear disarmament worldwide military expenditures had risen to more than one

trillion dollars this was a traumatic event for those who took to the streets during the cold war. the nuclear early ninety's he probably did. the largest and most effective nonviolent peace movement in history and successful men of the united states was moving towards sharp increase in offensive nuclear capacities and it the government was forced to back down and fact of the reagan administration was forced to adopt the rhetoric of the peace movement in order to continue with their programs that's where star wars comes from and we're not planning to tack anyone we're just planning to eliminate nuclear weapons if you measure the peace movement by the number of people who march in one thousand nine hundred two their one million marched in central park in new york at the height of the cold war.

last year there were forty thousand who marched at the review conference of the month of aeration treaty well the big difference in numbers true is the peace movement lost its we're going to. talk significantly but the lesson there is very clear a mass nonviolent political movement can change of all. the importance of nuclear proliferation is very much one. or even aware or concerned with what a surprise to discover a fifteen year old concerned by the outcome of the nonproliferation treaty is name is rafael even though. i just like to say that because of you and your speeches right now serving part of my school. and i'm like ok. let's do it once i actually found out how bad it was on three different people who

really made it clear to me speakers. and research which shocked me and i watched it smash were very last stage to have a speaker all the way from new york. she is an activist nuclear disarmament educator producer your advisor on the list just keeps going there's never a warm welcome for kathleen. ok the effectiveness of a social movement is sometimes very surprising and hard to track but it also depends on the creativity of the of the social movements themselves in the activists involved with ideas and images and stories and that's why we sailed boats in the nuclear test songs they've kind of surmised that all the weapons used in the second world war are equivalent to three megatons that includes the two nuclear weapons used on hiroshima and nagasaki all the bombs in the bullets. that represents all of the firepower of the second world war ok so now i'm going to give

you another sound and this second sound is the equivalent firepower of the world's nuclear arsenal today.

the only way forward that would make sense and would stop this mad the rush for seeking the capability to make nuclear weapons is for those countries that have nuclear weapons to find a way to give them up and to rely full security on non-nuclear means. when i say a mad rush over the past couple of weeks five or six countries have indicated that they might be interested in developing a capability to enrich uranium australia canada ukraine kazakhstan south africa. these countries that's sad why should they be left behind canada is interested in the small level of richmond very far away from a nuclear weapon capability but the technology for enrichment nonetheless is the same we sometimes for for to it as

a latent proliferation you put in place all the technologies to make nuclear weapons but you stop at a much lower level. orders to use part in all this we were third or good at our dedication to peacekeeping as a percentage of gross domestic product is now dropped down to like. we used to be leading the world in the battle against nuclear proliferation and we were one of the leading countries in the world in the battle against the weaponization of space canada has very little space in which to. make progress because. it's a number much later it is a nuclear plants just like mafia that have signed on to us clearly named in foreign policy that the best policy military policy has been changed dramatically and we canadians are big trouble in terms of are historical commitment to peace and disarmament. everything is in place to proceed with disarmament one hundred

eighty eight countries committed to disarm they said the shining message that goodwill could prevail but so far the governments choose to spend billions perfecting this terminal threat rather than fighting poverty or global warming. will future generations heirs to the thousands of bombs be as lucky as their parents will be live without seeing a nuclear explosion either by accident or by design maybe maybe not. but until the treaties and international law are on. the bond between.