MAILBOX

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

Newspaper has duty
to educate readers

Dear Editor:

Your News Viewpoint of Jan. 13
contains several statements about
Nuclear Weapons Free Zones
(NWEZ) that need correction.

To say that ‘‘no one wants nu-
clear weapons in his community,”’
may be true, but both North Shore
constituencies elected MPs from a
party which continues to allow the
testing of nuclear-capable cruise
missiles and proposes a fleet of
nuclear-powered submarines.

That same government refuses
to ban nuclear vessels from our
harbor. We may never be asked to
store nuclear weapons, but we are
regularly put within their legal ra-
dius when certain foreign vessels
are allowed into our port.

You dismiss the real importance
of designating a municipality a
NWFZ as merely symbolic. True,
“its symbolism would be mean-
ingless in a nuclear war,’’ but then,
what would be useful in such a

Nuclear
awareness
begins

at home

Dear Editor:

Your editorial of Jan. 13 stated
that municipalities have no man-
date to become involved in na-
tional or international problems
icc. Nuclear Weapons Free Zone
education.

On the contrary, awareness of
and concern about these problems
starts with the individual, i.e. the
clestorate. Over 90 per ceni of the
electorate voted in a referendum to
declare the District of North Van-
couver a Nuclear Weapons Free
Zone. The municipality is the first
level of government in Canada and
sbould respond to the wishes of the
voters.

Many other municipalities in
Canada are deciered Nuclear
Weapons Free Zones and
organizations for worid pete are
striving to make Cinada a Nuclear
Weapons Free country. Then
Canada could fulfill its important
role as a peacemaker between the
super powers.

Leaders in Washington and
Moscow are listening to the people
of the world and are negotiating
for nuclear weapons reductions.

The U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.
are talking about declaring the
Arctic a Nuclear Weapons Free
Zone.

Your editorial also states that
nuclear weapons are not likely to
de housed in the Lower Mainland
area of Vancouver. This is not
true: American warships with nu-
clear weapons aboard visit the Port
of Vancouver on a regular basis.

The local Nuclear Weapons Free
Zone committee requested funds to
promote interest in the community
and to generally publicize the con-
cept and inform the public.

Our children and grandchildren
wil! thank us for doing our best to
promote peace in the world —
$6,500 is little enough to pay.

Rick Shier and Ted Powis
Peacemakers Committee

St. Christopher’s Anglican
Church, West Vancouver

suicidal catastrophe? More nuclear
bombs? More missiles?

Surely the whole point of a
NWFZ declaration is to become
part of a growing area of the world
that is actively working to diminish
the possibility of nuclear conflict.

You are perfectly correct to say
that the fear of nuclear annihila-
tion is dominant in our world, yet
you contend that we ‘‘must live’’
under it. How wrong you are, we
must eliminate it.

Peace groups throughout the
world, in both East and West, in-
cluding VANA. (Veterans Against
Nuclear War, of which I am a
member), have had a moderating
influence on their government’s
policies.

International trust is beginning
to increase, but there are still nu-
clear weapons in Britain, China,
France, Israel, the U.S., and the
U.S.S.R. Governments must be
encouraged to eliminate all these
weapons.

The reduction in world tension
could lead to more weapons reduc-
tion. One way you could help is to
believe that what you write can
positively further that process.

You have a moral responsibility
to help your readers to understand
the stark realities of nuclear pro-
liferation, and thereby to take
specific steps to avoid them.
Harvey Burt
North Vanceuver

7 - Friday, February 24, 1989 - North Shore News

r

- ‘on Granville Street

presents

a Sunday afternoon with

IZZARD

at
2932 Granville Street

on

February 26th, 1989
2:30 p.m.

& ’

A>.
aye

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