ABSTRACT
The Canberra Commission was convened by the Australian government in 1995. Its members were thoughtful critics of the nuclear status quo. They issued a clear, unequivocal call for elimination of nuclear weapons. Many having held senior political and military posts, they were fully cognizant of the requirement that abolition be achieved over time and in a secure fashion, but insisted that should not be an excuse for indefinite, or protracted, delay. In some respects the Commission adopted positions long taken by the Pugwash Movement, and Joseph Rotblat was among Commission members. Their mandate was explicit:
The Commission will develop ideas and proposals for a concrete and realistic program to achieve a world totally free of nuclear weapons.
The Report was simply organized around arguments for abolition, responses to common defenses of retention, and steps to take for abolition. Annexes develop the discussion of verification, and the law. In skeletal form, the steps to be taken are as follows: The aimnuclear weapons should be eliminated
elimination “should be conducted as a series of phased verified reductions that allow states to satisfy themselves, at each stage of the process, that further movement toward elimination can be made safely and securely”
