It says it is essential to create "a climate of trust, and to strengthen cooperative security through multilateral dialogue."

The comments were made at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Monseigneur Antoine Camilleri, Undersecretary for Relations with States said promoting nuclear security is of significant importance to the Holy See.

He acknowledged the progress that international collaboration has already made.

At the same time, he said work needs to continue on two fronts.

One is to prevent the growth of nuclear weapons production.

The other is to rid the world of them.

This will require a range of measures to counter different concerns.

Camilleri says one set of concerns involves issues like socio-economic development, human rights and political participation.

Others, he says, need extra effort.

For example, extra work will be needed to physically protect nuclear material.

This will involve ensuring the material is safely contained.

Camilleri says safe containment is of central importance to nuclear security work "as failure to control nuclear material could have catastrophic consequences".

The other issue Camilleri says needs extra effort involves "counteracting insider threats as well as preventing cyber attacks on sensitive data and facilities".

This will mean paying extra attention to ensuring information security and computer security systems are robust.

It will also mean taking extra care to protect information about nuclear security.

Camilleri said cooperation between states is essential as "many threats to nuclear security do not respect borders".

He said these threats are "facilitated by the political instability and crises that ... plague numerous parts of our world.

"The Holy See is, therefore, pleased that great efforts have been made by the IAEA and its member states to strengthen the security regime ... and to improve and complement the regulations and the legal framework for it.

"These efforts have to be continued," he said.

Source

• ICN
• CNA
• Image: Daily Times

Their stance echoes Vatican statements about North Korea's nuclear capabilities and Pope Francis's concerns.

The U.S. bishops' conference "welcomes the action of the U.N. Security Council ...," Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, N.M. said.

He says the Conference encourages "this important step toward a world without nuclear weapons".

Cantú chairs the U.S. bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace.

He said the U.S. bishops have long supported ratification of a comprehensive test ban.

The United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution asking countries to stop nuclear weapons testing.

The resolution presents avoiding nuclear weapons testing as an international norm.

The resolution, proposed by the United States, passed with 14 votes. Egypt abstained.

Wall Street Journal says the resolution is symbolic.

Sept. 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

At present 166 countries, including the Holy See, have signed and ratified the Treaty.

A total of 183 countries have signed the treaty but have not ratified it, including the United States.

The U.S. failed to ratify the treaty in a 1999 Senate vote.

Instead, it has observed a national moratorium on nuclear weapons testing since 1992.

The nuclear test ban treaty will not take effect until several countries ratify it.

These are the U.S., North Korea, Egypt, Iran, Israel, China, India and Pakistan.

North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test on September. 9.

It said the nuclear warhead it detonated could be mounted on ballistic rockets.

The explosion was estimated at about 10 kilotons.

This is about two-thirds the power of the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War.

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• CNA
• Image: crnchy.com

You are in harm's way if you live in or near a large U.S. city or major military installation. And considering that radiation fallout from a nuclear attack would hurt virtually everyone, and cause irreparable harm to our earth-home, we are all threatened by nuclear weapons.

Dr. Bruce Blair, a former military officer responsible for 50 Minuteman nuclear missiles in Montana, and now co-founder of Global Zero (www.globalzero.org) - an international organization dedicated to eliminating all nuclear weapons - shared with me a highly dangerous little known fact: Both the United States and Russia each have hundreds of nuclear warheads still aimed at each other.

And what's even worse, these weapons of mass destruction are programmed at launch ready alert - otherwise known as hair-trigger alert - meaning they are fully armed and ready to be launched within just 30 minutes of a perceived nuclear attack.

The risk of misinterpreted information or system failure could lead to accidental nuclear war. The world has already experienced several close calls.

During the 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama pledged that he would "work with Russia to take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert."

That has not happened.

Instead, to the contrary President Obama has proposed an unprecedented and dangerous $1 trillion modernization over the next three decades of the U.S. nuclear war triade - currently composed of air (B52 and B2 bombers), sea (about 8 Trident ballistic missile submarines at sea at all times), and land (approximately 450 ICBM nuclear missile silos buried in the U.S. Great Plains).

The thought of all this should send chills down our spines.

In their 1983 landmark pastoral letter "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," the U.S. Catholic bishops wrote that a reliance on nuclear deterrent strategies must be an interim policy only. And they firmly added, "We cannot consider it adequate as a long-term basis for peace."

That was said 33 years ago!

The world needs now the courageous leadership of the U.S. bishops to declare that nuclear deterrence has become an entrenched, intractable part of American war preparation, and, therefore, is completely morally unacceptable.

And that a systematic plan must be quickly put in place to move toward total multilateral disarmament of all nuclear weapons.

Dr. Blair told me that Global Zero has just such a plan.

The Global Zero Action Plan calls for the United States and the Russian Federation - who together hold more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons—to negotiate major cuts in their arsenals, followed by negotiations with the remaining seven nuclear weapons nations.

Through a phased-in multilateral reduction of nuclear weapons, with a rigorous comprehensive verification and enforcement system, all nuclear powers proportionately would move to total nuclear disarmament and dismantlement by 2030.

Sounds like a plan - a reasonable, common sense, morally correct, doable plan!

Blair explained that "The barriers to getting to a world without nuclear weapons - global zero - are not technical, scientific, or economic. The barrier is one of political will."

Watch this challenging and inspiring short video http://www.globalzero.org/demand-zero/prague-speech. And then join the global zero movement.

As we approach the sad anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let us remember that our God is the God of life!

And let us honor him, and his creation, by tirelessly praying and working for the day when nuclear weapons will be confined to history.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

"It is sadly ironic that states vociferous in their condemnation of chemical weapons are silent on the continued possession of nuclear weapons," said Archbishop Francis Chullikatt.

"The international community must appeal and act with one voice to ban all weapons of mass destruction."

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What I would like to do here is to share how the development of the Church's teachings have advanced over the years and what those teachings say to us today. I will then explore the current status of efforts to address these unique weapons and specifically, the position of the Holy See.

As you all are aware, new attention is being paid to the unresolved problem of 20,000 nuclear weapons located at 111 sites in 14 countries. More than half the population of the world lives in a nuclear-armed country. Each year, nations spend $100 billion on maintaining and modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

When we are talking about the nuclear disarmament, the principle of good faith is vital within international law. Essentially, good faith means abiding by agreements in a manner true to their purposes and working sincerely and cooperatively through negotiations to attain agreed objectives.

Therefore, the current modernization of nuclear forces and their technical infrastructure are contrary to such good faith because they make difficult or impossible a negotiated achievement of global nuclear disarmament.

President Ronald Reagan at his second inaugural address in 1985 said: "We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth". I think it is time to follow through on his goal.

Read the complete address of Archbishop Francis Chullikat' on Nuclear disarmament

Sources

• Image: Urban75 Blog