At the meeting of the board of Attac Finland in December, I made clear that I would like Attac to support a) the re-constitution of the 1984 EU constitution drafted by Spinelli, and b) of the demands contained in the European Nuclear Disarmament Manifesto of 1980.

As I expected, my proposal was respectfully rejected, although many of the other board members confirmed that, personally, they support my ideas.

As I see it, we are in the midst of a process of opinion building, of convincing people of the necessity of the European (political) federation, and of unilateral European nuclear disarmament.

To me, the demand for the establishment of a political federation by constitutional means follows logically from the insight that the building and the maintaining of nuclear weapons is a crime against humanity. The crime needs to be mentioned and banned in the constitution. Hopefully, this insight is just around the corner. Plus the courage to draw the practical conclusions.

---

The conference in London 7 January (arranged by Dan Plesch and the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy) on Disarmament and Globalisation: Old and New Wisdoms in appears to have been an academic exercise rather than a milestone, or even a step, on the road towards a new END campaign. But maybe my impression is superficial, because it is based on a summary report alone, namely http://www.cisd.soas.ac.uk/Editor/assets/d&g%20summary.pdf

Mr Knut Langeland delivered the keynote speech. He is an ambassador of the Norwegian government, which sponsored the conference.

Baroness Shirley Williams, an advisor to UK Prime minister Gordon Brown, made another keynote speech, about nuclear non-proliferation.