Churches Must Be 'Vigilant' Towards Nuclear Proliferation

World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee has stressed the need for churches to be vigilant against nuclear proliferation in a statement adopted at its recent meeting in Bossey, near Geneva.

The WCC governing body reaffirmed "the churches' consistent call for the abolition of nuclear weapons", which today is "more urgent than ever" as control mechanisms like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are being put under pressure by recent global political and military developments.

Among those developments, the statement pinpoints North Korea's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests; Iran's "failure to assure the international community that its civilian nuclear programmes are not camouflaging its intention to develop nuclear weapons capability"; Israel's refusal to subject all of its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); the "unilateral initiative" by the United States to accept India as a nuclear weapon state; and the "ongoing nuclear modernisation programmes of the nuclear weapon states" - namely the US, UK, France, Russia and China.

The statement also mentions the dangers of "unintended or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons" as a result of "insufficiently secured weapons or weapons materials [falling] into the hands of non-state groups committed to acts of terror".