Alicia Sanders Zakri, political coordinator for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said Washington has deployed about 150 nuclear warheads in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
“Although there is no official confirmation or denial, we know that nuclear weapons are proliferating in five countries in Europe and Asia — Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy,” Sanders-Zahri said at a press conference in Geneva on Monday, referring to the estimates unnamed “civil society experts” and Turkey”.
She added: “Civil society experts estimate that there are about 150 warheads deployed at US air bases in these states.” The campaign spokeswoman did not name the experts she was referring to, nor did she specify when US nuclear warheads were deployed in the five countries she mentioned.
For her part, campaign coordinator Susie Snyder, in a brief statement, pointed out that after the 2009 elections in Germany, the coalition agreement referred to “efforts to remove American weapons from German soil.”
“And so the cloud of secrecy began to dissipate,” she said. Guido Westerwelle, then head of the German Foreign Ministry, was sharply criticized by colleagues and allies for “talking loudly about what was not supposed to be spoken about.”
Similarly, according to Snyder, in 2011 the government of his country accused former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers of “treason” for “disclosing a secret” about American weapons in the country.
On this occasion, the campaign coordinator, laughing at the briefing, said: “But it’s not a secret. We all know that there are weapons there. It’s clear.” In this regard, Snyder described the issue of transparency in the field of nuclear arsenals as a “serious problem.”
She stated that ICAN is incredibly concerned about the deployment of this type of weapon in any European country, since such actions increase the risk of nuclear war, referring to the Caribbean crisis.
Data released on Monday in Geneva by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) showed that the U.S. spent $43.7 billion on maintaining its nuclear arsenal in 2022, nearly five times that of Russia (9, $6 billion), and about four times that of China. ($11.7 billion).
The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons is a coalition of non-governmental organizations founded in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. She is committed to complete nuclear disarmament and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
Source: TASS
