Inside Perspective on Disarmament

New Zealander Bob Rigg has written an essay for Open Democracy protesting the US manipulation of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and the ousting of its Brazilian director-general, José Bustani, in 22. Rigg worked for the disarmament organisation for nine years before resigning in support of Bustani. According to Rigg’s essay, The Evisceration of a Disarmament Body, the OPCW’s ostensibly multilateral status has become increasingly compromised by US involvement, post September 11. “Compliance and servility are the watchwords of the new OPCW, which was also a testing-ground for the subjugation by the US of other international and United Nations organisations,” he writes. “Something is rotten in the state of multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation.” Bob Rigg chairs the NZ National Consultative Committee on Disarmament (NCCD).