FAO: TONY BLAIR, PRIME MINISTER

1 September 2000

Dear Tony Blair,

We urgently request the British government to finally take a strong, united and principled position against the US government's plan to build an American Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system. We also ask that the British government does all it can to uphold the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty as it now stands and not support or favour modifications that will allow BMD to go ahead . President Bill Clinton has said that the reaction of allied governments to US BMD will be crucial in any US decision and that decision by necessity moves ever closer.

The British government and those of France, Russia, and China; the European Union; the UN Secretary General, and the countries of the New Agenda Coalition and the Non-Aligned Movement all spoke out recently at the Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in support of maintaining and strengthening the ABM Treaty. Despite this there is a sense that the British government does actually favour modifications which would allow the Americans to pursue their BMD systems and we ask that you clarify this situation.

Russia, China and North Korea have already made it quite clear that they consider the possibility of an American BMD system to be a threat to themselves and to the nuclear balance that the ABM Treaty has created over the years of its existence. The progress of world nuclear disarmament has already been destabilised by the knowledge that the US are working on and contemplating the use of BMD systems.

We urge you to speak out against the US plans for implementing BMD systems in the strongest possible terms and to make it absolutely clear that the British government will not be party to such plans. America has admitted that it will need to use facilities outside its own country, including Menwith Hill and Fylingdales, for their National Missile Defense (NMD) system. In keeping with the spirit of the ABM Treaty and Britain's commitment to it we believe that it is essential that facilities in the UK are not used for BMD purposes and that the British government makes it clear to the world that it is absolutely opposed to such systems.

Instead of supporting an American system that will destabilise the world's nuclear balance in order to 'protect' itself from dubious threats we ask that the British government encourages the US to accept the Russian suggestion of drastically reducing the number of each others warheads and to de-alert all such nuclear weapons systems as a positive step towards the aims of the NPT.

Yours sincerely

Anni Rainbow and Lindis Percy