Military spending obscene—Sir Shridath

Press, 23 November 1983, Page 26

Military spending obscene —Sir Shridath

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, has urged leaders of the Commonwealth press to plead for a more ordered world and for an end to military spending which he called obscene. “You must persist until the world turns away from the military culture that has so flawed our civilisation and tarnished its achievements,” he said when opening a conference of the Commonwealth Press Union. Sir Shridath said that more than ?USI million was spent on military purposes

during each minute of 1981 — “more than is required to feed more than 2000 badly undernourished children in the poorest countries for an entire year.” The world could eliminate malaria with the money represented by eight hours of military spending. He said this “obscene expenditure” was paid for in the case of the United States by deficit financing — savings attracted by high interest rates. “The consequences for developing countries are simply staggering,” he said. “Every 1 per cent rise in interest rates adds $2 billion on the debt-servicing burden

of the less developed countries.” While he said he could not easily dismiss the argument that mutual nuclear deterrence had kept the peace between East and West for 38 years, he said, “The argument that if our children are to inherit the Earth we must have the capacity to destroy it several times over is losing its credibility. “While the world economy is in the throes of its gravest crisis since the 19305, threatening the weakest countries and the weakest economies with collapse, a military culture encourages us to frolic on the margins of apocalypse.”