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Former Canadian FM Says "No" to US NMD Plan
Former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said "No" to the US missile defence system known as NMD in a comment carried Wednesday by Canada's leading newspaper, the Globe and Mail.
In defense of the ABM treaty, an agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to limit missile defence systems, Axworthy said the treaty proves "a cornerstone of our arms control architecture," which ensures "a strong deterrent for any state thinking of launching an initial attack."
US President George W. Bush, however, describes the treaty as a thing of the past and insists that his new approach will look to the future, Axworthy said.
By completely overturning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, NMD would not only "risk violating several agreements, but its scale also makes it clear that the real targets for Mr. Bush are not the so-called 'rogue states' that might try to attack the United States, but the other nuclear powers, namely Russia and China," said Axworthy, who retired from the post of foreign affairs minister last year.
Axworthy believes that "the system Mr. Bush is trying to sell us as a means to enhanced security will likely have the opposite effect."
Axworthy proposed a serious public debate be held in Canada before any commitment is made, while the Canadian government must try its best to "redirect American unilateralism by ensuring a thorough and proper consultation among allies and, indeed, among all nuclear states."
"If there is no accommodation by the United States to reasonable proposals...then Canada should say no," Axworthy noted. He also pointed out that "our basic interests are best served in a world where there is restraint and limits on weapons proliferation and where there is a spirit of co-operative enlightened self- interest, not a return to a world of alliance based on confrontation and division."
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