Nella giornata di ieri 13 marzo la delegazione dei membri della nuova “Mission” di pace ha iniziato il suo viaggio alla volta di Sulaimaniya, nel Kurdistan iracheno. Organizzata dall’International Peace Bureau, la più antica federazione di organizzazioni e associazioni per la pace con sede a Ginevra, parteciperà alle celebrazioni della strage della popolazione di Halabja operata con gas chimici da Saddam nel 1988.
Questa Mission rappresenta la continuazione di un percorso iniziato nel 2006 e che in questi anni ha avuto sviluppi inaspettati: grazie all’interessamento e la collaborazione di Regione Toscana, Comune di Firenze e ospedale Meyer, in questa regione del nord Iraq è stata possibile la costruzione di quattro ospedali la cui alta specializzazione in campo radioterapico e oncologico sarà di grande aiuto anche per la cura delle stesse vittime sopravvissute agli eccidi di Saddam.
Ai colloqui con le autorità locali parteciperanno, per il Comune di Firenze, la Presidente della Commissione Pace Susanna Agostini, mentre l’IPB di Ginevra sarà rappresentato dallo stesso Presidente Thomas Magnusson.
Nella delegazione ricordiamo inoltre Fulgida Barattoni attuale Presidente di IPB-Italia, ufficio italiano dell’organizzazione, assieme a diversi altri membri. Si affiancheranno inoltre alcuni operatori economici italiani che avranno colloqui con i corrispondenti locali. Ricordiamo che la regione autonoma del Kurdistan iracheno ha vissuto marginalmente le vicende della guerra e la loro spinta al progresso economico e sociale rappresenta una priorità per risollevarsi rapidamente dal lungo periodo di sofferenze e distruzione.

E’ imminente il nuovo viaggio nel Kurdistan iracheno organizzato da International Peace Bureau, anche quest’anno invitati per il 16 marzo prossimo alla cerimonia dell’anniversario della strage di Halabja. E’ una conferma ulteriore dei rapporti sempre più stretti con la regione autonoma nel nord Iraq, che vede come interlocutori privilegiati, la nostra associazione oltre che istituzioni italiane.

Questa volta il viaggio porterà alcune novità. Sarà infatti presente nella delegazione anche Thomas Magnusson, il Presidente dell’International Peace Bureau mondiale, mentre si affiancheranno alcuni imprenditori italiani negli incontri con le locali istituzioni.

Ricordiamo che lo scorso anno le stesse Nazioni Unite hanno riconosciuto alla città di Halabja lo status di “città martire” mentre il sindaco Khder Kareem è entrato nella rosa dei Vicepresidenti di “Mayors for Peace”, l’organizzazione sorta nel 1982 ad opera dei Sindaci di Hiroshima e Nagasaki allo scopo di abolire nel mondo le armi nucleari. La testimonianza della strage operata con armi chimiche nel 1988, su Halabja e su diverse aree della regione curda, aiuta nell’innalzare l’attenzione dell’organizzazione sulla necessità stringente di considerare nel loro insieme tutte le armi di distruzione di massa, nucleari, batteriologiche e chimiche.

Nota: Nei prossimi giorni cercheremo di aggiornarvi tempestivamente sulle ultime novità che proverranno dai membri della delegazione.

Stay tuned!

Membri della delegazione:

Dal Comune di Firenze apprendiamo una notizia importante.

Una delegazione di medici, fisici, tecnici, infermieri è in partenza per Sulaimaniya, l’antica capitale del Kurdistan iracheno. Il team che porterà aiuti ed esperienza nel centro radioterapico e oncologico della cittadina irachena partirà il 4 gennaio e si fermerà circa tre mesi. (leggi tutto il comunicato stampa)

Giova ricordare come questa iniziativa ha origini lontane. Dal viaggio che IPB-Italia, assieme alla delegazione italiana dei Sindaci per la Pace, intraprese nel marzo 2006 in quelle terre dell’Iraq settentrionale, invitata dal sindaco di Halabja per il ricordo della strage del 1988. Dalle circostanze fortuite che permisero il contatto tra la First Lady irachena e presidente della locale organizzazione “Save the children” con l’allora direttore dell’ospedale pediatrico fiorentino Meyer, Paolo Morello. Dai successivi incontri in Italia di esponenti istituzionali di rilievo, con l’avvio di progetti di cooperazione sanitaria e di promozione di culture di pace.

“La cooperazione - afferma la presidente della Commissione Pace del Comune, Susanna Agostini - è fondamentale per creare la pace a vari livelli e le istituzioni svolgono un ruolo fondamentale per mettere in relazione i saperi. Questo è un momento importante di verifica della concretezza del lavoro di cooperazione che stanno svolgendo Mayors for Peace e International Peace Bureau-Italia. Quando si trova il denominatore comune della volontà e delle potenzialità di operatori di pace e istituzioni, si crea la risposta immediata ai bisogni impellenti. La sinergia vera si realizza quando si riesce a interfacciarsi con realtà differenti e si mettono in relazione i bisogni con i saperi. Così nasce l’amicizia eterna fra i popoli”

Ed è una “reazione a catena” in positivo che continua.

Vedi anche:

• Il Summit di Pianosa
• Tornare in Kurdistan due anni dopo
• Cooperazione sanitaria, da Pianosa a Sulaimaniya

Mazzarino (CL), Italy, november, 27th, 2009

International Conference: “Peace is in our hands”

HELSINKI 1984 AND THE CONCEPT OF UNINTENTIONAL NUCLEAR WAR IN THE STORY OF THE NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT IN EUROPE

Michele Di Paolantonio, MD, President of IPPNW Italy, Peace Prized Nobel 1985 Organization (michele.dipaolantonio@katamail.com)

Mr. Iranians and Italians Mayors for Peace, Authorities, Misses and Misters, I thought to treat the following argument to try to give the most possible productive and useful contribution to the works of this international Conference. We are in the hearth of the Mediterranean Region, and in the world’s agenda the problem of Iranian nuclear power is crucial. Therefore I would like to try to give the same kind of knowledge that twentyfive years ago I gave in Helsinki, to a path for peace and nuclear disarmament that developed quickly some month later, soon after that USA and USSR, in the Summit in Geneva between Reagan and Gorbaciov on November, 7th, 1985, agreed only and rapidly on a unique point; the existence of the concept of “Unintentional Nuclear War”, in other words for technical or human mistakes.

After the foundation of the Italian Section of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the organization founded by three eminent sovietician medical doctors and three eminent american medical doctors in the extreme chance to develop a dialogue between USA and USSR in the core of the nuclear arms race and of the Cold War, I was sent to London, to the most important strategic centre of the western world by my italian University, the University for Studies of Bologna, to develop a thesis of specialization in Preventive Medicine focusing the nuclear military risk that came as a black cloud on my nation and my people for the deployment even in Italy, and specifically just here, in Sicily, at Comiso, of american nuclear euromissiles Cruise, answering to the deployment towards Western Europe of sovietician nuclear euromissiles SS20.

The target of that thesis was to understand the kind of most effective and possible answer to avoid the risk.

I knew in London that the NATO, with complex instruments of Elint, Electronic Intelligence, in other words electronic espionage, had known that sovietician Mig airplanes, leaving from lybic airbases, and flying in the international air space upon the Sicily Channel, made photos of each part of the Sicily’s ground, to check and localize every TEL, Transporters Erectors Launchers, in other words the jant american military trucksequipped with mobile system to launch each four nuclear Cruise missiles. In Comiso, in fact, arrived, at the end of 1983, 112 Cruise missiles, deployed on 28 jant truchs TEL. The sovietician action trended to find every truck TEL to shut it further selectively with nuclearheads vehicoled by missiles SS20, but this temptative, I knew during my journej to London, was unuseful, because the necessary technical time to use the information, in other words the time between the moment of aerial photo and the missile’s arrival on that site was six hours, therefore in six hours the truck TEL, in the photo there, should have been moved in every other part of the island. They explaned me in London that the kind of attack waited on Sicily in case of a nuclear war scenario should have been determined by the (I never more will forget it!) “capacity of disabiliting” of the nuclear system Cruise: a massive nuclear attack against the island, with a number of nuclear warheads between 80 and 200, depending by the possible use of thermonuclear bombs of 1 Megaton or 150 kilotons, in other words bombs of different size. I must remember that the small bombs, 150 kilotons, were equivalent, each, to near 10 bombs of Hiroshima, of 1 Megaton, were equivalent, each, to near 80 bombs of Hiroshima. Only in this way sovieticians, launching a third of their SS20 vehicles on Sicily, should have destroyed 112 Cruise missiles here deployed.

Well, when, in June 1984, in Helsinki, I showed my thesis and its conclusions in the workshop on Strategies for the Prevention of Nuclear War, at the IV World Congress of IPPNW, happened an extraordinary event: the whole discussion was developed about my thesis. Other than these informations, all the participants were shocked by something else, much more warrying, that I had found and that I showed: the concept of Unintentional Nuclear War.

In fact I had reached in my thesis the knowledge that on june, 4th, 1980, the nuclear war had began and ended in 15 minutes without the launch of missiles, when at the General Command of Defense of the United States, the NORAD, the main computer showed on monitors the arrival of an intercontinental balistic attack from the Soviet Union. The men of NORAD needed 15 minutes to discover the mistake. If that mistake could have happened in Europe, where a sovietician euromissiles SS20 or an american Pershing II should have reached in only 12 minutes their target the nuclear could have started even by a mistake. Between those persons that were earing me was also a great man: Pavel Palachenko, in other words the man that in the following months was chosen by Reagan and Gorbaciov as their unique interpeter in their talks that brought them in two years to agree to dismantle the intermediate nuclear missiles from Europe.

After Helsinki and our workshop, and after the common acceptance of the concept of unintentional nuclear war in the technical protocol of agreement of the Summit Reagan-Gorbaciov, interpreted by Pave, of November, 7th, 1985 in Geneva, I myself gave on December, 12, 1985, in Oslo, to the Italian Ambassador in Norway, in occasion of my participation at the ceremony of giving of the Peace Prize Nobel 1985, informations about that protocol. After that, I met again Pavel in Moscow, at the end of may 1987, in occasion of the World Congress of IPPNW, two days before the Reagan Gorbaciov signing of the INF Treaty about the Intermediate Nuclear Forces, that dismantled even the Cruises missiles from Sicily, and we greeten kindly each other. But I felt the most great pleasure and proudness in Rome, at the IV Summit of Peace Prized Nobel Laureates, in November 2003, when, met again Pavel, near Gorbaciov, whose he is the Special Advisor, after 15 years since then, I could see with happiness that he remembered very well the work made together in Helsinki in June 1984, before the Peace Prize Nobel given to my organization, and before the dismantelling from Europe of the intermediate nuclear missiles.

Dearest friends, I am telling you this my personal experience, hoping that those prudent and long seeing choices that had been made in 1987 in Europe dismantelling the euromissiles and saving a continent could be useful to your cities, to your citizens, to your government, to your nation. Today is not possible anymore the development of new national nuclear arsenals, even if is a right of each nation to search and to develop energy from civil nuclearpower plants. Facing the existing alert in the world against new nuclear proliferation the national proudness of a government or of a people must leave the way to the prudence of a good father of family, as well as each Mayor, all over the world, should be. Finally, allow me to greet the Mayor of Halabja, that knew the horror of the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction against his citizens only twenty years ago, and that we thank warmly having accepted again the invitation to be with all of us.

Have you a good work, dearest Iranians Mayors, wishing you to can tell your success, for your Country and for the world, in defending peace, Not Nuclear Proliferation, and the solution of the racing international crisis about the Iran’s Nuclear Power in the next World Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War that we will held in Switzerland, in Basel, next august.

Peace is in our hands.

Mazzarino (CL), Italy, november, 27th, 2009

International Conference “Peace is in our hands”

Mr. Mayor of Kermanshah, Mr. Mayor of Halabja, Mr. Mayor of Mazzarino, Mr. Mayors for Peace, Citizens,

At the Conference “Cities are not targets”, helded in Florence, in november 2007, in the historic “Salone dei Cinquecento”, the Mayors for Peace, leaded by the Mayor of Hiroshima Tadatoshi Akiba, addressed the international community to avoid that cities will never more considered targets of weapons of mass destruction. Accepting the proposal made by the Italian chapter of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Peace Prized Nobel 1985 Organization, we participated at the United Nations, as members of the official delegation of Mayors for Peace, to the Preparation Commission for the Review Conference for the Not Proliferation Treaty. In that occasion we proposed, inside the “Good Faith Initiatives” wanted by the Mayor of Hiroshima, the Mediterranean as Nuclear Weapons Free Sea. The Italian and American decision to close the nuclear submarine base of La Maddalena Island represents a best occasion to talk about Mediterranean as Nuclear Weapons Free Sea, as first concrete step in the Disarmament Decade declared by the UN from 2010 to 2020, and in the 2020 Vision of Mayors for Peace.

The Mediterranean Sea, site of ancient civilizations, can and must, even for the story of mankind, be the first zone of the Planet to be made free by nuclear weapons, under the guide of the martyr cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of the global movement of Mayors for Peace, by those wanted, built, developed and leaded, and that represents today the highest point of the Citizens’ Diplomacy, that must support the Nations’ Diplomacy to build perspectives of Peace and Disarmament, and together of Dialogue and Development between civilizations, and of Defense of the Planet and of the Nature.

Particularly, we propose that harbours, sea surfaces, waters and depths of the Mediterranean Sea will be forbidden to ships and submarines armed by nuclear weapons and that, where deployed, must be removed and forbidden for the future, each nuclear device from the sea surface, the sea waters and the sea depths.

We are convinced that an agreement to create the Mediterranean Nuclear Weapons Free Sea represents the project most quickly available, in the perspective of the development of Nuclear Weapons Free Zones both in Europe and in the Middle and Far East.

We should have helded in Italy, in our region, in our Adriatic territory, in occasion of the Mediterranean Sport Games of last June and July, the Mediterranean Meeting of Mayors for Peace, to officially launch in that site the proposal to create the Mediterranean Nuclear Weapons Free Sea, but the l’Aquila’s Earthquake avoided that.

Our municipalities, Pineto and Silvi, are contiguous. Our citizens are showing different political majorities, and have different opinions about political programs, but their two Mayors agreed to do their best, inside the “Good Faith Initiatives”, to guarantee, behind their different political opinions, inside the 2020 Vision of MfP, the first condition for the future and the health of our citizens: peace and nuclear disarmament, general, mutual and controlled.

So we are here today, accepting the most kind and most useful and opportune invitation sent by your Mayor, not only to launch from the hearth of the Mediterranean the proposal to create a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, but also with the hope to move the Colleague Mayor of Kermanshah and all the Iranians Mayors for Peace to work in their country to avoid in his region another, most dangerous race to make new nuclear weapons, but on the contrary to make possible the starting from their own Country the proposal to free all the Middle East, other than the Mediterranean Sea, by nuclear weapons and each other weapon of mass destruction.

About the possibility to use the nuclear energy for civil purposes, to produce electric energy, the debate is opened in the world and even in our country, and to no country must be denied the possibility to self determinations in this sense, moreover (even with new global consciousness so well showed by the 2020 Vision by the Mayor of Hiroshima and by 3147 Mayors for Peace from all the Planet, the target to make the world free by all nuclear weapons in 2020), is most urgent and fundamental to remove all suspicions, confusion, shadows, inside the legal development by a nation and by a people to research and develop the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, between civil and military use of this national technology.

Has happened yet dramatically, as well remembered recently and sadly in an exclusive interview given not for a case to an authoritative Italian newspaper by the General Director of the Agency for the Atomic Energy of the United Nations, the Peace Prize Nobel 2005 and Egyptian diplomatic Mohamed el Baradei, that to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by a State, even through false documents, was promoted a war against a nation and a people. That is why that must be suddenly removed every possible suspicion about the possible military use of uranium enriched by Iran.

Particularly, he has also said: “We made many progresses about the control of the program of enrichment in Iran. We are proceeding to new verifications to avoid that will be military purposes. Naturally must be made more, insist, reach absolute certainty.

Different foreign intelligences gave us documents about what is happening in Iran. Those are plans of study about nuclear weapons; but they show that those study are not been developed. After an hard and right work of screening the Agency suspects instead that some documents are false.”.

To avoid risks that all this put to the maintenance of peace, and also near the next change of El Baradei with a Japanese diplomatic to guide the Atomic Agency of the United Nations, the Italian Mayor of Pineto, the Italian Mayor of Silvi and the Italian President of IPPNW, Nobel Peace Prized 1985 Organization, from the hearth of Sicily and of the Mediterranean region, supported by the kind hospitality of the Mayors of this country, allow to invite the Mayor of Kermanshah and all the Iranian Mayors for Peace to move their government to accept the request, made to it by the Atomic Agency, to avoid each possible justification towards hostile actions towards their Nation and their People, to accept the international request to send abroad, towards a foreign and friend nuclear power State, the uranium to be enriched to produce Iranian nuclear energy for civil and peaceful purposes.

We allow ourselves furthermore to suggest to the Mayor of Kermanshah and to the Iranian Mayors for Peace to be supported towards this target by the whole global organization of Mayors for Peace, in the person of the Mayor of Hiroshima Tadatoshi Akiba, and to ask him personally this kind of support to You, to Your Cities, and to Your People.

Thank you for your attention

Luciano Monticelli, Mayor of Pineto,

Gaetano Vallescura, Mayor of Silvi,

Michele Di Paolantonio, President of IPPNW Italy,

Peace Prized Nobel 1985 Organization