Dear Friends,

In light of Daisaku Ikeda’s September 8th proposal “Building Global Solidarity Toward Nuclear Abolition” * outlining a 5-part plan toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, I thought you would like to know about today’s debate in the General Assembly.

Below is a brief report with links from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, UN Office. I plan to visit them next month.

* Complete proposal text is available at: www.daisakuikeda.org.

Thank you!

Sue Zipp
San Francisco
suezipp@worldcitizen.org
Editor - www.EmpowerTheUN.org

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Dear all:

This morning the UN General Assembly <http://www.un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/index.shtml> began its general debate, with heads of state and foreign ministers delivering statements on their policies and priorities on a broad range of issues for the year ahead. Reaching Critical Will <http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/> of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom will be monitoring these statements and creating an index of all references made to issues of disarmament, peace, and security.

This index is a tool to gauge the issues which will be detailed during the First Committee <http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com09.html> of the General Assembly, starting 5 October 2009. As the debate continues, please keep an eye on the index, which is sorted both by country <http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com09/disarmindex.html> and by topic <http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com09/disarmindextopic.html> .

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon <http://www.un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/sgopen.shtml> opened the session morning; here are his remarks related to disarmament:

“...let this be the year that nations united to free our world of nuclear weapons. For too long, this great cause has lain dormant. That is why, last October, I proposed a 5-point plan for putting disarmament back on the global agenda. And now the international climate is changing. The Russian Federation and the United States have pledged to cut their nuclear arsenals. This coming May, at the UN Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we have opportunity to push for real progress.

Tomorrow’s historic Security Council summit—chaired by the President of the United States, with us for the first time—offers a fresh start. With action now, we can get the ratifications to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force. Together, let us make this the year we agreed to banish the bomb.”