NATO HQ blocked by Greenpeace protest

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Tuesday June 27, 2006 12:21 by Eoin Dubsky - Greenpeace Amsterdam, Netherlands

24 activists arrested protesting US nukes in Europe

Twenty-four Greenpeace activists from Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK were arrested earlier this month at NATO’s Brussels Headquarters. A Greenpeace truck carrying a 3.6 meter (12 feet) full-size replica of a US B61 nuclear bomb blocked the entrance to NATO with activists bearing banners saying “Nukes out of NATO.” Their demand: remove the 480 US-owned and controlled nuclear weapons from Europe!

© Greenpeace / Philip Reynaers

More activists entered the site carrying banners onto the NATO symbol statue, while others dropped a two-meter-square banner repeating the message from NATO’s main building. Some of the media who covered the action quoted a NATO spokesperson saying that it was "dangerous". None of them that I read made anything of the dangers of NATO nukes, or the hypocracy of NATO telling Iran off for enriching uranium.

background
Sixteen years after the end of the cold war, 480 US Nuclear weapons remain in Europe. They are currently stationed in Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK. Each of these nuclear weapons has a destructive capacity of up to ten times that of the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima.

Last week a report released by the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDC) chaired by Hans Blix called for the 480 US-owned and controlled nuclear weapons to be removed from Europe and returned to US soil. The WMDC report provides great detail on the dangers of US nuclear weapons. The Commission also explains how these weapons impede international efforts to negotiate further nuclear reductions with Russia.