[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10079-H10081]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




JOSEPH ROTBLAT, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER, CONDEMNS FRENCH NUCLEAR TESTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from American Samoa [Mr. Faleomavaega] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, on the first day of this month, the 
Government of France exploded another nuclear bomb in the South 
Pacific, its second detonation in a new series of tests. France's 
nuclear bomb--involving a 110 kiloton blast--was seven times more 
destructive than the bomb that we exploded in Hiroshima 50 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, as we recall the destructive nuclear fury that was first 
unleashed in history against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I 
think it most appropriate to recognize Mr. Joseph Rotblat, a physicist 
working on the manhattan nuclear bomb project during WW II who quit in 
protest because of his convictions, and who was personally devastated 
when he learned of the bomb's consequences in Japan.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Mr. Rotblat, a Polish-born 
scientist, who has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the 
Norwegian Nobel Committee. Mr. Rotblat, the world's first protester 
against nuclear weapons, has devoted his entire life to ending the 
madness of the nuclear arms race. He is the founding member of the 
Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, as well as the 
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading think tank 
on security and disarmament issues.
  Mr. Speaker, at a time France is thumbing its nose at the 
international community, over 160 nations have officially protested 
this madness by President Chirac and the Government of France to 
continued exploding of nuclear bombs in the South Pacific, I find it 
highly commendable that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Mr. 
Rotblat, one of the world's most eminent and vocal opponents of nuclear 
testing.
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Rotbalt has condemned France's resumption of nuclear 
testing and has written French President Chirac, urging that France 
immediately cancel its tests. Mr. Rotblat says, ``There is no reason at 
all in my opinion for President Chirac to resume tests. I can't see any 
tactical reason at all. I can only see this as an attempt to make their 
bomb a little better, or develop perhaps a new type.'' That is right, 
Mr. Speaker, a bomb a little better. To kill more people.
  The two bombs that we exploded in Japan, Mr. Speaker, accounted for 
over 290,000 men, women, and children who died as a result of those 
nuclear explosions. What madness, what madness, Mr. Speaker. We can say 
that let us get rid of chemical and biological warfare, but let us 
continue dropping nuclear bombs.
  Mr. Speaker, again, I commend Mr. Rotblat for his life's work and the 
Nobel Committee for their selection of Mr. Rotblat as a Nobel 
recipient. By these actions, the Nobel Committee on behalf of the world 
community has sent a strong message of protest to the French Government 
and I would hope that Paris would respond by immediately canceling 
their nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
  What arrogance, Mr. Speaker, that President Chirac has the 
unmitigated gall to do this. For over 30 years they have been exploding 
nuclear bombs in the South Pacific. The American people do not know the 
suffering of the some 100,000 or 200,000 people who live in those 
islands, and, yes, 28 million people who live in that region. We just 
have not taken a better understanding of the very real serious problem 
we have there in the Pacific.
  While President Chirac is drinking his sweet wine in Paris, some 
200,000 people's lives are at stake if that Muroroa atoll should break 
and leak, and there are already indications of leakages because of the 
168 nuclear bombs that have been exploded on that atoll alone.
  What arrogance, Mr. Speaker, what arrogance.
  
[[Page H 10080]]


Anti-Bomb Physicist Wins Peace Prize--Nobel ``Protest'' Against Atomic 
                  Tests Shared With Arms Control Group

                           (By Fred Barbash)

       London, October 13.--The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 
     today to Joseph Rotblat, a British physicist who helped 
     invent atomic weapons in the 1940s, and the organization 
     dedicated to doing away with them that he later formed with 
     Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell.
       This year's prize stands as a ``protest'' against French 
     and Chinese nuclear testing, the chairman of the Norwegian 
     Nobel Committee, Francis Sejersted, said in Oslo as he 
     announced the award to Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on 
     Science and World Affairs.
       Rotblat, 86, who walked out of the secret U.S. government 
     laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., in 1944 after deciding the 
     atomic bomb being developed there was unnecessary, also used 
     the occasion to express his ``outrage'' at France's two 
     recent nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
       Since 1957, the Pugwash Conferences have been assembling 
     select groups of scientists, including many of the brains 
     behind the American, Russian and British nuclear arsenals, 
     for private exchanges on arms control. They have opened up 
     lines of communication among such scientists, serving as 
     forums for both technical and political issues, and as back 
     channels to top-level policymakers. Subsequently the 
     conferences were broadened beyond the scientific community.
       Rotblat said today that the organization's goal is, and 
     always has been, to convince governments that ``the genie can 
     be put back in the bottle.''
       A French Foreign Ministry spokesman offered congratulations 
     to Rotblat today, the Reuter news agency reported, but Prime 
     Minister Alain Juppe rejected appeals that France end its 
     nuclear testing program and said the award would have no 
     effect on ``policies we have adopted for reasons of national 
     interest.''
       While no single treaty or agreement can be traced precisely 
     to Pugwash discussions, according to historians of the 
     nuclear era as well as Rotblat, the conferences have 
     addressed complex problems--such as anti-ballistic missile 
     systems, test ban monitoring and the spread of chemical and 
     biological weapons--long before they reached the formal 
     negotiating tables of world leaders. They are considered to 
     have exercised at the very least a subtle influence on 
     virtually every major contemporary arms accord.
       More broadly, the organization, which has 10 Nobel 
     laureates among its charter members, was among the first of 
     what are now many such groups designed to encourage 
     scientists to confront--and control--the uses of their 
     science.
       The group was cited by the Nobel committee for its efforts 
     to ``diminish the part played by nuclear arms in 
     international politics and in the longer run to eliminate 
     such arms.'' It has made scientists ``take responsibility for 
     their inventions,'' it said.
       Unlike with last year's Peace Prize--awarded jointly to 
     Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine 
     Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat--names of the 
     recipients of this one were not leaked in advance. Indeed, 
     neither Rotblat nor the Pugwash Conferences, of which he is 
     president, was on any of the speculative ``short lists'' 
     published in the Norwegian press.
       The Pugwash Conferences, along with philosopher and antiwar 
     activist Bertrand Russell, were viewed with suspicion by some 
     fervent anti-communists during the 1950s and by ardent Cold 
     Warriors afterward. But the organization has been respected 
     for years by arms control professionals. Until today, 
     however, it was relatively unknown to the rest of the world, 
     as was Rotblat, a cheerful, intense man who says he still 
     ``wakes up in a cold sweat'' when he hears about such events 
     as France's nuclear tests.
       ``Who would expect that a little man like myself and a 
     little-known movement, unknown to the general public,'' would 
     get the Nobel Peace Prize, Rotblat said today as he walked 
     briskly from the organization's grungy office near London's 
     Russell Square to a news conference. ``Who is he?'' 
     bystanders asked reporters as they followed him.
       Rotblat, a native of Poland, was working on a one-year atom 
     bomb project at the University of Liverpool in 1939 when the 
     British team of which he was a part joined U.S. scientists 
     working on the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb at 
     Los Alamos.
       ``I started to work in 1939 on the atom bomb,'' he said in 
     an interview today. ``I was afraid that German scientists 
     would build the weapon and use it to rule the world. I 
     thought that the only way this could be prevented was if we 
     built it too and threatened to retaliate--the classical 
     concept of nuclear deterrence.''
       Two new pieces of information gained at Los Alamos 
     persuaded him to leave. First, he said, he learned that a 
     major purpose for the bomb was to threaten the Soviet Union, 
     which was then a World War II ally.
       Then, he said, ``at the end of 1944 I learned that the 
     Germans had abandoned their project; the purpose of my being 
     on the project was gone.'' When he informed his superiors at 
     Los Alamos that he was leaving, he said they ``accused me of 
     being a spy'' who was planning to turn over atomic secrets to 
     the Russians. After refuting the accusation, and agreeing for 
     security reasons to a fabricated story about why he was 
     leaving, he was allowed to return to Britain, where he 
     switched from nuclear physics to nuclear medicine.
       When he heard that the United States had dropped the bomb 
     on Hiroshima, he said, he was ``devastated. . . . I did not 
     expect it would be used as soon as it was made. I felt angry, 
     worried and fearful about the future of our civilization.''
       ``The world didn't know it, but we knew that scientists 
     were capable of making a bomb a thousand times more 
     powerful--a hydrogen bomb.''
       In 1955, he and Russell decided to seek the help of 
     Einstein in warning the world of the danger they foresaw. 
     From that collaboration came the ``Russell-Einstein 
     Manifesto,'' which declared that ``such weapons threaten the 
     continued existence of mankind.'' Among the signers were 10 
     men who were or would become Nobel laureates, including Max 
     Born, Percy W. Bridgman, Einstein, Frederic Joliot-Curie, 
     Hermann J. Muller, Linus Pauling, Cecil F. Powell and 
     Rotblat.
       From the manifesto emerged the Pugwash Conferences, so 
     named because the first one was financed by American 
     industrialist Cyrus Eaton and held at his retreat in the 
     village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia.
       The meetings, which were by invitation only, tended to be 
     small--groups of 25--and moved from country to country.
       While participants often read from prepared papers, they 
     could be and were challenged in open give-and-take sessions, 
     according to accounts of meetings by historians.
       Invitees have included not only scientists committed to 
     arms control--such as Rotblat--but top-level government 
     scientists guiding the rapid Cold War nuclear arms buildup. 
     Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm and Princeton 
     scientist Frank von Hippel were among the participants.
       Rotblat said today he has never been able to say with any 
     precision how much the Pugwash discussions influenced the 
     Soviet position on arms limitations.
       At the very least, he said, they opened channels of 
     communication among scientists on both sides of the arms 
     race.
       He said he is certain that Pugwash discussions influenced 
     Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's thinking on nuclear issues 
     through the participation of Yevgeny Velikhov, one of the 
     former Soviet leader's key science advisers, who helped 
     persuade Gorbachev not to try to match President Ronald 
     Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.
       Experts said today that the Pugwash meetings also have 
     contributed significantly to the nuclear testing moratorium 
     observed by the United States and the Soviet Union; to 
     resolving complex issues involving testing verification and 
     monitoring; to the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty 
     of 1987; and to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, 
     designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to countries 
     that do not already possess them.
       Indeed, the idea for the treaty was first discussed at a 
     Pugwash meeting in 1958, according to the organization's 
     official history.
       The peace prize, which will be formally awarded in Oslo in 
     December, carries an award of $1 million. Asked what would be 
     done with the money, Rotblat gestured toward his cramped and 
     cluttered office.
       ``I haven't really thought about it,'' he said. ``But look 
     around you.''
                                                                    ____


           Rotblat, First Nuclear Protester, Wins Peace Prize

       London, October 13.--Polish-born Joseph Rotblat may have 
     been the world's first protester against nuclear weapons, 
     quitting the Manhattan project to build America's atom bomb 
     in 1945 because of his convictions.
       The physicist, who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize 
     on Friday, went on to become one of the world's most vocal 
     and effective opponents of the nuclear arms race.
       The 86-year-old, who lost his wife in the Holocaust, won 
     the Prize jointly with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and 
     World Affairs, of which he was a founder member and is now 
     chairman.
       He is also a founding member of the Stockholm International 
     Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a leading ``think-tank'' on 
     security and disarmament issues.
       Rotblat lives in London where he was professor of physics 
     at the University of London. He has been a British subject 
     since 1946.
       He was a refugee from Hitler's Europe who was working at 
     Liverpool University in northern England when World War Two 
     broke out.
       He began research on the potential of atomic power in 
     Britain in 1940.
       He became a member of a group of British-based scientists 
     who worked on the secret Manhattan Project. But he left the 
     project as Germany headed for defeat, making him possibly the 
     world's first anti-nuclear arms protester.
       Rotblat was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan 
     project base at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the atomic bomb 
     was developed that later devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
       His departure was officially said to have been because he 
     wanted to return to Europe to search for his wife.
       After the end of World War Two, he founded the Atomic 
     Scientists Association, the forerunner to the Pugwash 
     organisation. He later became president of the organisation, 
     which was dedicated to arms control.
       Although Rotblat had always been conscious of the 
     disastrous consequences that 

[[Page H 10081]]
     the development of nuclear weapons could entail, he had felt compelled 
     to work on the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb 
     before Germany could do so.
       When it became clear that Germany had given up working on 
     the atomic bomb, he pulled out of the project and did not 
     know the bomb had been completed until it was dropped on 
     Hiroshima.
       He was said to have been ``devastated'' by the consequences 
     of its use on Japan in the dying days of the Pacific war and 
     dedicated his life to campaigning against the nuclear arms 
     race, urging other scientists to do so.
                                                                    ____


             France Uneasily Congratulates Rotblat on Nobel

                           (By Alistar Doyle)

       Paris, October 13.--France uneasily congratulated ban-the-
     bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat on winning the Nobel Peace 
     Prize on Friday, dodging the laureate's condemnation of 
     French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
       ``We congratulate the Nobel Peace Prize laureate,'' Foreign 
     Ministry spokesman Jacques Rummelhardt told reporters. 
     ``France wants disarmament, including nuclear disarmament, in 
     security.''
       ``Security will permit disarmament,'' he told the 
     ministry's regular daily press briefing, adding: ``French 
     policy aims to establish security.''
       Despite Paris's official congratulations, the award to the 
     veteran nuclear physicist-turned-peace campaigner seemed set 
     to make the French government squirm.
       Pierre Lellouche, a member of parliament and former 
     strategic affairs adviser to President Jacques Chirac, said 
     he was ``perfectly scandalised'' and accused the group 
     Rotblat heads of being a former tool of Soviet propaganda.
       Both Rotblat and the Norwegian Nobel Committee wasted no 
     time in urging France to cancel nuclear tests. Paris broke a 
     three-year moratorium last month by detonating an underground 
     nuclear device in French Polynesia.
       Rotblat, 86, said he hoped the prize ``is a message not 
     only to the French but to the Chinese as well.'' China and 
     France are the only official nuclear powers still testing.
       Rotblat wrote to President Jacques Chirac last month 
     protesting against the French tests. ``I think it's very 
     bad,'' he told Reuters in London on Friday.
       ``There is no reason at all in my opinion for President 
     Chirac to resume tests. I can't see any tactical reason at 
     all. I can only see this as an attempt maybe to make their 
     bomb a little better, or develop perhaps a new type.''
       Nobel Committee chairman Francis Sejersted told Reuters 
     Television: ``The specific message to the French is a protest 
     against the nuclear tests, as it is a protest against nuclear 
     tests in general and nuclear armaments in general.''
       France has staged two tests since early September despite 
     howls of outrage abroad. Chirac says tests are vital to check 
     France's nuclear arsenal and plans as many as six more before 
     banning testing for ever.
       France's La Chaine Info television commented that the 
     impact of the Nobel decision on French diplomacy would hardly 
     have been worse had environmental group Greenpeace won.
       Rotblat, who helped develop the first atom bomb in the 
     United States in hopes it would never be used, shared the 
     million-dollar prize with the Pugwash Conferences on Science 
     and World Affairs which he chairs.
       Lellouche said: ``I am personally--and as a specialist in 
     these matters--perfectly scandalised by the fact that an 
     organisation which one knows was openly manipulated by the 
     Soviets should be honoured in this way at a time when 
     everyone knows the controversy about the French tests.''
       The Pugwash conferences played a backroom role in the Cold 
     War, bringing together scientists, scholars and public 
     figures from East and West to discuss nuclear and other 
     security issues.
                                                                    ____


           Australia Lauds Prize for Anti-Nuclear Campaigner

       Sydney, October 14.--Australia, a fierce opponent of French 
     nuclear testing in the South Pacific, welcomed on Saturday 
     the award of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize to anti-nuclear 
     campaigner Joseph Rotblat.
       A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Australia applauded 
     Rotblat's remark that he hoped the prize would send ``a 
     message not only to the French but to the Chinese as well.''
       ``We certainly welcome those remarks from someone as 
     eminent as a Nobel Peace Prize winner and it reinforces the 
     wide range of interests against the nuclear testing 
     programmes,'' the spokesman told Reuters.
       ``It basically reinforces the need for a comprehensive test 
     ban treaty, which Australia has been consistently working 
     towards over so many years.''
       Rotblat, a nuclear physicist who devoted his life to trying 
     to ban the bomb he helped create, won the Nobel Peace Prize 
     on Friday and seized the opportunity to spread his anti-
     nuclear message.
       The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awarded the prize to 
     the 86-year-old peace campaigner and the Pugwash organisation 
     he founded, also made clear it was intended as a protest 
     against French nuclear tests.
       France, which is carrying out a series of tests in the 
     South Pacific, and China are the only nuclear powers still 
     carrying out tests.
       Australia has said French and Chinese nuclear tests 
     threaten to undermine negotiations for a Comprehensive Test 
     Ban Treaty due for completion next year by encouraging more 
     non-nuclear powers to develop atomic weapons.
       Canberra is especially critical of French testing, arguing 
     Paris should, like Beijing, test on their home soil. Having 
     failed to prevent the resumption of tests in French 
     Polynesia, Australia is now trying to embarrass France in 
     world forums.
       Australia will seek condemnation of nuclear testing at next 
     month's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in New 
     Zealand.
       It is also lobbying with Japan and New Zealand for an anti-
     testing resolution within the United Nations.
                                                                    ____


                         OAS Hits French Tests

       French nuclear tests are detrimental to peace and 
     international security, the Mexican ambassador to the OAS 
     said as she assumed the rotating presidency of the 
     organization's permanent council.
       Ambassador Carmen Moreno de Del Cueto restated the 
     Organization of American States' call for France to end its 
     tests in the South Pacific.
       ``I deeply regret that the French government has ignored 
     [our] call . . . to suspend the nuclear tests,'' she said. 
     ``I reiterate our call . . . and urge the French government 
     to finally suspend their nuclear tests, which do not 
     contribute to either peace or international security.''
       Mrs. Moreno de Del Cueto thanked the OAS for its gradual 
     reforms.
       ``Little by little the OAS has moved forward in pluralism 
     and tolerance and has begun to eliminate the radical bad 
     habits of the Cold War,'' she said last week.

                          ____________________