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What, realistically, could we have expected to hear from a group of pro-nuclear has-beens besides a lot of hypocritical posturing? This was the upshot of last week's meeting of the 16-member Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, brainchild of the hawkish foreign minister Gareth Evans. The commission met for three days to prepare a report for a United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. Besides having the distinct flavour of yet another pre-election stunt, the commission's discussions were full of duplicity and outright lies. The only exception to this was former French PM, Michel Rocard, who was happy to tell as many as possible (Keating even had to intervene to stop him from talking to a reporter at Admiralty House!) that Jacques Chirac's latest nuclear testing program in the Pacific did not jeopardise the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). While Evans and Co. may benefit from headlines heralding the end of nuclear testing, the reality is, as they themselves admit, that the end is nowhere in sight. While there's a slim chance that the CTBT may be signed this year — and that's still far from certain — it will not stop the select club of five nuclear powers from retaining, testing and developing nuclear weapons. For example, while the US is obliged, under the terms of the arms treaties it has with Russia, to decommission more than 15,000 nuclear weapons by 2003 (most of which are obsolete), that still leaves it with 3500 warheads — more than enough to blow up the world many times over. Further evidence is the US government's decision to go ahead, regardless of the CTBT, with its weapons tests at the Nevada test site. Over the next two years, the US government has planned six underground "zero-yield" tests which it has euphemistically described as "experiments". Nuclear experts, including those in favour of nuclear weaponry, agree that such zero-yield tests can result in fully fledged nuclear explosions. The nuclear powers and their allies in Australia maintain that these tests are necessary as a deterrent against "outlaw" states such as Pakistan, Iraq and North Korea. As Keating told the commission: "We are an old and committed ally of the United States and have benefited from the protection of extended deterrence". Hitting back at criticism from former New Zealand PM David Lange, who dared to suggest that Evans' commission initiative was hypocritical given Labor's support for nuclear weapons, Evans proclaimed that Australia is in a unique position to broker a nuclear-free world. His proposal for a "nuclear accord" and "action plan" which would contain "realistic measures" for nuclear disarmament is a plan to deceive people. Does the federal Labor government really believe it can dupe the majority of Australians into believing that it has, overnight, changed its stripes? The only way we will be persuaded is if it stops mining and selling uranium, breaks with the US military alliance and closes the US bases, and gives political and material support to the anti-nuclear movement here and internationally. Cold War politicians living in a post-Cold War world are having to run for cover. Their guise is to set up commissions, talk a lot, do nothing substantial — and make the world a more unsafe place to live. That means that we have to keep up the fight for a nuclear-free world. Without the majority of people leading the way, humanity faces the danger of extinction.