The continued reliance of some states on nuclear arsenals, with tens of thousands of times the destructive power of that unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaves our children and grandchildren under the constant threat of annihilation. All people, including those in the nuclear weapons states themselves, would be more secure in a world without nuclear weapons.

Every possible effort must be made not only to prevent additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons, but also to ensure that these instruments of ultimate terror do not fall into the hands of those who might use them to perpetrate acts of unthinkable mass destruction.

This goal can only be achieved through the global elimination of all the nuclear weapons currently in the possession of the nuclear weapon states, and by the securing of all fissile materials under a system of international controls.

The nuclear weapon states are obligated to achieve global nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Yet, the NPT is in danger of collapse because the nuclear weapons states have spent more than 30 years evading its fundamental principal: that non-proliferation and disarmament must go hand in hand.

As Nobel Laureates in peace, science, medicine, economics and literature, we call upon the US and the other nuclear weapons states to commence the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, starting now.

We call upon all Heads of State to begin negotiations immediately on the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons and to set a timetable for their total elimination by the year 2020. We call upon all Heads of State to attend to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations in New York in May 2005.

We call upon all states that may be considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons to abandon this perilous course and to insist instead upon a nuclear weapons-free world as the only basis for national and global security.

Finally, we call upon civil society to join with the Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons and with civil society organizations around the world that have come together to demand “Abolition Now!”

Let our legacy be securing for our posterity a future free from the threat or use of nuclear weapons.