Closing Plenary
2003 World Conference against A and H Bombs- Nagasaki
August 9, 2003


Gerald O'Brien
Peace Council of Aotearoa - New Zealand



It is an honour again to be privileged to work with you all who through your endeavours have fought to keep morality alive in our world.

All of you, dear friends in the Japanese struggle to rid the world of nuclear weapons have given us much.

You have given us the practicality of the Kobe Formula which must be spread. You have won a magnificent majority of the people of Japan to support the Hiroshima-Nagasaki signature campaign. You have given us one of the finest commitments to peace of any nation on earth in your Constitution which we all pledge ourselves to respect. But most of all you have given the world the truth from the awesome experience of our loved Hibakusha.

Now you are about to embark on a new signature campaign attuned to today's need, where the only superpower rejects the rule of law, and continues vertical proliferation unhindered.

I am privileged, as one of the first fourteen signatories of the Hiroshima Nagasaki Appeal, to join the new signature campaign which must rapidly build up such momentum for the 60th anniversary that it can put our deadly foes, the nuclearists, to flight. Let us start this campaign today. Let us start this very moment. Let us make it the victory push for total abolition. I can see in your eyes already, the enthusiasm that is in your heart.

There can be no more 1930s - no continuing aggression on one nation after another. The world is no longer prepared to allow its leaders to relapse into dishonour in their commitment. That time has come to say no to the imperialist aggressions of the oil barons and the armaments kings.

President Eisenhower's warning to the US to guard against what he called acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industries complex and its potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power now exists.

We must find common ground which spontaneously impelled the millions around our world to march against war itself.

We cannot have a world where irrational beings in order to control the world for private profit, make constant war.

Those who wield power were not born to that power - they gained it by determination. But, as Romesh Chandra has said, we are more than they,
we who want peace not war,
we who want justice not terror
we who want the world that we know in our hearts can be won - a world of sharing, a world of caring, a world of honour and humanity and the love.
That dear Renata can clearly see, we want this world here and now - This very day. Ours is not the beat of any drum of war, but the heartbeat of humanity. We will overcome. We shall overcome. We must overcome.