Nuclear club: No `rogues' allowed

THE issue of nuclear weapons has become so beset with double standards that it cannot be judged on an ethical level. What it boils down to is that some nations can have them and others cannot, the implication being that the latter group is less responsible than the others. There is nothing one would have liked more to see than the total destruction of the internal nuclear capabilities, for both war and the so-called peace purposes, but that is not what the nuclear-club nations are aiming at. They want to possess nuclear weapons and prevent others from having them.

The confuted logic by which they justify the irrational policy is that the others are ``rogue'' states whose only objective in obtaining these weapons is to wage war on them.

Even all the new states who have somehow gained nuclear capabilities are not put on the same scale of judgment. Some are tolerated and are not threatened with punitive actions. Others are considered to be war mongers who cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to have the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

This kind of perverted logic prevents one from setting any reasonable standard on which the issue of nuclear weapons can be measured and judged without prejudice.