NZ leader in 'nuclear thinking'

Whangarei MP Shane Reti was a New Zealand Government delegate at a United Nations nuclear disarmament conference. Photo / John Stone

New Zealand still punches above its weight in the fight for nuclear weapon disarmament, says Whangarei MP Shane Reti who has just returned from an international conference on the subject.

Mr Reti, the executive secretary of the New Zealand Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, said the Kiwi delegation had no qualms about telling giants like the US to hurry up and decrease its nuclear arsenal.

He was in New York at the five-yearly United Nations review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) last week with Labour MP Phil Goff, who is the Parliamentary anti-nuclear weapons group's chairman, and NZ Disarmament Ambassador Dell Higie.

"New Zealand is well recognised as leading the world in nuclear thinking.

"We have substantive countries coming to us and saying 'we're under the nuclear umbrella, could you speak for us?'," Mr Reti said.

"We do tell our story, that gives us some leverage," he said of New Zealand's anti-nuclear history which includes banning US nuclear weapons-carrying or powered naval ships.

But 45 years after the "P5" nuclear nations - US, United Kingdom, France, China and Russia - agreed to the NPT, dubbed the "grand bargain", their massive weapons stocks still exist. That grand bargain was essentially if those countries were allowed to keep their nuclear capability in the meantime, they would begin to disarm," Mr Reti said.

"It's turning out to be no bargain and nothing grand. It isn't happening fast enough. The issue for New Zealand at the conference was 'you need to keep your word'."

"The 'Nuclear 5' are recalcitrant, and the rest of the world is restless," he said.

Those five nations are also the permanent members on the UN security council. New Zealand and other delegates want the disarmament issue raised in the general assembly forum instead of that security council.

The international focus is shifting to the humanitarian perspective "that moves beyond balancing weapons and talks about body counts", Mr Reti said. "It also supports, and embedding in legislation de-alerting, or 'take the finger off the trigger' - where hours or days instead of minutes are taken to consider launching any retaliatory missiles. In 1983 an electrical storm appeared on Russian screens as a US nuclear missile attack and a counter attack was only avoided because a Russian expert on duty that day demanded visual confirmation," Mr Reti said.

"Geese flying in large formations have appeared on military screens as a nuclear missile launch."