[Al Arabiya Latest] European NATO allies will urge President Barack Obama to remove remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe, a spokesman for Belgium's prime minister said on Friday.
Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Norway will call "in the coming weeks" for scores of Cold War-era airborne American nuclear warheads to be removed from European soil, the office of Prime Minister Yves Leterme said. A joint proposal by the five NATO members will demand "that nuclear arms on European soil belonging to other NATO member states are removed," Dominique Dehaene said.
No need to 'demand'; just ask. Good idea. Bring the nukes home; and if Y'urp is ever again threatened, they can depend on the EU nuclear umbrella.
Only the United States has nuclear arms stored in Europe, with British and French nuclear weapons being deployed "in other countries," he added.
"It's a question of launching the debate at the heart of NATO," he stressed, underlining it would form part of broader disarmament talks also focused on conventional weapons.
Former NATO chief Willy Claes and three more senior Belgian political figures urged such a call in Friday's Belgian press, citing "Obama's pledge to work to eliminate all nuclear weapons."
A statement from Leterme stressed that "Belgium is in favor of a world without nuclear weapons and advocates this position at the heart of NATO," in preparation for a New York conference in May on global nuclear arms non-proliferation efforts. |