International

Jan Marijnissen, SP Group Leader since the party first entered the national parliament in 1994, has resigned his post as leader. Jan, who will continue to exercise a leadership role in the broader party, as well as remaining an MP, made the announcement at a press conference this morning. “I have done the job with great pleasure for fourteen years, but the time has come to make way for a successor,” he said. “This is the best moment for that.”

According to prominent American politicians, nuclear disarmament is not a luxury but a necessity. These politicians wrote an opinion piece earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal[1], arguing for active steps to be taken towards nuclear disarmament, a message with which many will agree in principle. The only question is by what means this can be achieved. There remain, after all, thousands of nuclear weapons operational, while the peaceful use of nuclear technology, supported by the opinion article's authors, itself presents a proliferation danger. This emerged from the laborious negotiations around the nuclear treaty between India and the United States, a treaty which is intended to make possible the development of the country's nuclear industry while at the same time offering no support to India's nuclear strike capacity. A difficult, if not impossible goal, writes Karel Koster.