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Dear Colleagues,
Please find below an Invitation to endorse an Open Letter to Presidents Biden and Putin in advance of their June 16, 2021 Summit, calling on the Presidents to commit to never initiating a nuclear attack (no-first-use policy). The letter arose from a No-First-Use global campaign meeting on May 26-27 which was co-sponsored by the Basel Peace Office. Click here to endorse the Open Letter. Best regards Invitation to endorse an Open Letter to Presidents Biden and Putin in advance of their June 16, 2021 Summit Dear Friends and Colleagues, On June 16, 2021, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Switzerland in their first Summit. This provides an important opportunity for the leaders to reduce tensions between the two countries, lower the risks of a nuclear exchange, and make commitments to additional concrete measures for nuclear risk-reduction and disarmament. A key measure they could discuss would be the option of committing to never initiate a nuclear weapons attack, i.e. to adopt no-first-use policies. Following a No First Use global campaign meeting on May 26-27, we have drafted an Open Letter to Presidents Biden and Putin calling on them ‘to declare a joint commitment that your nations will not use nuclear weapons first under any circumstances, and to make this a key step toward fulfilling the UN goal to totally eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet.’ (See below for text of the Open Letter). We invite you to endorse the letter, as an individual, by June 6 in order for your name to be included when we send the letter to Presidents Biden and Putin on June 7. Click here to submit your endorsement. We also encourage supporting statements from civil society organizations to be circulated to media (mainstream and social media) from June 10 and sent to us by June 14 when we will be sending the Open Letter to the media. Click here to submit a supporting statement from a civil society organization. We thank you for your time and your efforts for a more peaceful and secure world. Yours sincerely John Hallam (Australia) |
