Geneva, July 2, 2008. The G8 leaders are confronted with a rising tide of global crises that they will have trouble resolving without looking at some fundamental questions. Two related questions in particular stand out: military spending and nuclear weapons.

As experts and decision-makers scramble to find money to stabilise oil and food prices, mitigate climate change and address mass poverty, new figures show once again that military spending remains an 'untouchable' resource. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute announced on 9 June that the figure for global military spending in 2007 reached a new high of $1,339 billion, a rise of 6% over the previous 12 months. Furthermore, it is no secret that the world's biggest arms merchants are the most powerful members of the G8 itself. The International Peace Bureau, whose main programme focuses on "Sustainable Disarmament for Sustainable Development", deplores these massive investments in militarism and urges the G8 to urgently review its priorities, in particular, to agree on the establishment of a new international fund to combat poverty, funded by reductions in military programmes.

Nuclear weapons still represent the most urgent threat to the world's security, since a political-military crisis (such as we are currently seeing over Iran) could spiral out of control very quickly. The very existence of nuclear arsenals threatens mass destruction of civilian populations and serious contamination of the environment. However the members of the G8 seem to be largely focussed on the dangers posed by possible terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction, without any critical perspective on their own programmes of nuclear 'modernization'. We urge them to follow the lead of senior statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic by declaring unequivocally their aim of moving towards a nuclear-weapons free world, by setting a date for the opening of talks leading to a nuclear weapons convention.

Since the host nation Japan is in the unique role of being the only country to have suffered bombardment by nuclear weapons, we believe it has a special responsibility to convene talks at the Summit between the other members of the G8 and to impress upon them the urgency of taking rapid steps to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

The Group of Eight (G8) Summit (held in Hokkaido, Japan from July 7 - 9, 2008) is the annual meeting attended by the leaders of the eight countries, namely, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and the President of the European Commission.

Official Info at : www.g8summit.go.jp/eng/