Page 4, 18th April 2008

18th April 2008

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Page 4, 18th April 2008 — Benedict XVI calls for end to small-arms race
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Benedict XVI calls for end to small-arms race

BY CAROL GLATZ
POPE BENEDICT xvi has urged nations to cut military spending and funnel savings into peaceful development projects around the world.
He also called on nations to halt the spread of handguns and other small-calibre weapons "that fuel local wars and urban violence and unfortunately kill too many people across the world every day".
The Pope made his comments at a seminar sponsored by die Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and which brought together dozens of experts and representatives from the Church, govenunental agencies and grass-roots groups. It was entitled "Disarmament, Development and Peace: Perspectives for an Integral Disarmamenr.
The Pope praised the gathering, saying the topic was "timely" and "urgent".
In order to avoid repeating "the horrors of the Second World War" leaders created the United Nations, but "today the international community seems like it is missing", he said.
Tension and warfare rage in some parts of the world, while in places where people are spared such conflict "the feelings of fear and insecurity are widespread", the Pope said.
Global terrorism also has blurred the lines between peace and war and is "seriously jeopardising the future hope of humanity". he said.
While peaceful economic development and political and juridical guidelines are needed to help 'educe conflict and weapons proliferation, the Pope said it is "ever more urgent to foster a new laiimanign that enlightens humanity's self-understanding and the meaning of its place in history".
Arms reduction and authentic peace can only come about after violence has been eliminated from its roots, that is, in people's hearts, he said. People need to "decisively point them
selves toward the quest for peace, the good, and the just" and become peace workers.
The UN charter called on members to promote peace and security by spending as little as possible on military hardware, the Pope said, adding that Pope Paul VI urged nations in 1964 to use savings from reduced arms expenditures toward development projects.
But instead, "the production and sale of arms are continually on the rise" and make up a large, "inesistible" portion of the world economy, Pope Benedict said.
According to a 2008 Stockhelm International Peace Research Institute report, the world's largest supplier of major conventional weapons is the United States, which supplied 29 per cent of the world's needs in 2006, followed by Russia with 25 per cent.
The Pope renewed appeals that nations "reduce military spending for arms and seriously take into consid eration the idea of creating a world fund earmarked for projects of peaceful development for people".
Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican justice and peace council, said peace was threatened by underdevelopment and poverty on the one hand and on the other by economic progress that lacks any ethical or moral compass.
The Church's contribution is to promote "an authentic humanism" based on ethical and religious values rather than "technical solutions" to the problem of disarmament, he said in a speech.
The Pope and many seminar speakers said one problem in aims control was the use of dual-use technologies, in which products or know-how originally aimed at civil applications can be adapted for military use.
The Pope wrote that the "serious" risks in this field are in biological, chemical and nuclear technologies in which civil projects will never be deemed safe "without the general and complete abandonment of military and hostile programmes".
The council's secretary, Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, noted in his speech that another challenge is the lack or ineffectiveness of structures that can monitor biological, chemical and nuclear capabilities, in order to ensure they are used for peaceful, civilian purposes.
Another speaker said the best way to combat or control the use of technology for destructive ends is helping individual scientists and technicians adopt and follow an ethical code of conduct.
Davina Miller, head of the department of peace studies at the University of Bradford, said in her presentation that scientists not only can help inform policyrnakers about the nature and potential of existing and emerging technology, but that "scientists, ethically educated, can act as whistleblowers".




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