Gorbachev endorses Pugwash conferencу's work

     Fifty years after scientists first converged on this tiny Nova Scotia village to discuss the threat of nuclear weapons, Mikhail Gorbachev says there is more work to be done in the fight against a nuclear arms race.
     Discussions like those at the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs are a good start, the last leader of the Soviet Union said in a statement to organizers.
     «It is good to know that the (conference) is an ongoing, vibrant project that continues to bring together concerned scientists who fully understand the responsibility to humankind», Gorbachev said in a statement translated into English.
     Experts from around the world first met in Pugwash in 1957 when a local-born philanthropist suggested his summer home would serve as a quiet and private place to discuss the threat of nuclear arms during the cold war.
     Hundreds of meetings have since taken place throughout the world, and the so-called Pugwash movement was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.
     The latest conference, which was to end Sunday, attracted two dozen international delegates, including Tadatoshi Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima, Japan, where one of only two nuclear bombs was ever used as a weapon.
     Akiba, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, Liberal Sen. Romeo Dallaire and Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald were expected to address delegates at the closed conference on Saturday night.
     Gorbachev, who did not attend the conference, negotiated an arms-reduction treaty with U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
     The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty eliminated an entire class of medium-range missiles that had been based in Europe.
     Twenty years later, Gorbachev acknowledged the work of the experts who gathered in Pugwash.
     «(We need to) build an intellectual foundation for agreements that would dramatically cut the arsenals of nuclear weapons on their way to their elimination and prevent an arms race in space», read the statement.
     «We need your brainpower not just to analyze the problem, but to find solutions».
     While many delegates say the nature of a nuclear threat has changed since the Cold War, they agree the roughly 27,000 nuclear warheads that remain around the world should not be ignored.
     Thousands of the weapons can be launched with a half-hour notice. Though most belong to the United States and Russia, countries including Israel, North Korea and possibly Iran are developing their own.
     On Friday, Senator Romeo Dallaire said Canada should use its position as a middle power to encourage allies - particularly the United States -- to rid the world of nuclear warheads.
     Nova Scotia New Democrat MP Alexa McDonough, who also serves as chair of Canada's Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament, said the country needs to take action against nuclear weapons.
     «We need to do a great deal more to step forward ... to insist, for example, NATO - of which we are a member -- stop being a hypocrite», said McDonough following a meeting Saturday at a small church.
     «We say that we are committed to non-proliferation, to disarmament, to abolition of nuclear weapons, and on the other hand, we are participants in the biggest nuclear security umbrella in the world, which is NATO».
     NDP Leader Jack Layton agreed that Canada needs to play a lead role in reducing the number of nuclear weapons on the planet.
     «It's time for the Canadian government to stand up for a fundamental Canadian belief, which is a world with far fewer nuclear weapons», he said in an interview from Vancouver.
     Those attending the conference plan to produce a letter to governments around the world, pressing their case to dismantle nuclear arsenals.
     Experts are scheduled to attend meetings throughout the weekend, although they are not open to the public.
     It's this obscurity and privacy, said McDonough, which has helped the conference's success.
     «There is no room for, nor any desire for, grand-standing», she said.
     «That sometimes creates wedges and causes tensions, instead of ... a meeting of the mind, the extending of people's sense of hope and promise».