October 2, 2014, Gandhi's birthday and the International Day for Non-violence.
Douglas Roche, former Canadian Senator and the founding Chair of the Middle Powers Initiative, met with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi yesterday to advance proposals developed through the Framework Forum - a joint initiative of MPI, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and the Basel Peace Office.
Roche, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, presented the officials with the MPI briefing paper “A Beacon of Hope.” The paper calls for commencement of a comprehensive diplomatic process to achieve a global prohibition of nuclear weapons.
Senator Roche is on a speaking tour of several Indian universities to discuss the themes of his new book, Peacemakers: How People Around the World are Building a World Free of War.
'India has a new moment in the sun, and should use its growing influence on the world stage to press the US and Russia to resume negotiations to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenals,' Senator Roche told a seminar at Jindal Global University, Delhi on Oct. 1, the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. 'Gandhi’s peacemaking ideas live on in the new world in which India has sent a satellite to Mars and seeks a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.'
“The rock-star welcome India’s new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, received in New York and Washington shows once again India’s stature in the world. Sending a satellite to Mars was a fabulous achievement. Now India must use that stature to form a global partnership to strengthen the international structures for peace,” he said. “That would give meaning to obtaining a permanent seat on the Security Council."
Senator Roche, the world must never experience another nuclear attack such as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
'Although India became a nuclear weapons state, it nonetheless has a distinguished history in working to advance non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament, and has voted at the UN to start a negotiation process leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons,' Roche said. 'With world attention now on India, now is the time for India to exert global leadership to rid the world of weapons that can destroy civilization.'
In 2013 the United Nations General Assembly decided to convene a High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament by 2018, an initiative of the Non-Aligned Movement of which India has been a leader. Roche recommended that India convene a meeting of the nuclear weapons states to put a joint plan before the 2018 UN high-level international conference on nuclear disarmament.
'The first step would be enter into a strategic dialogue with the US and Russia to encourage both states to reduce their nuclear stocks down to the level of other states. India is a natural bridge between the US and Russia,' he said.