CEC, CCC and NCCCUSA wrote to the ministers of Foreign Affairs in March and early April, urgently requesting them to revise "NATO's present assertion that nuclear weapons ‘fulfil an essential role' and are the ‘supreme guarantee of the security of the allies'." The WCC endorses this appeal and has now extended it to include non-NATO nuclear weapon states.

In letters to diplomatic missions in Geneva, the WCC calls on the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the People's Republic of China and India, which are not members of NATO, likewise to adopt the three recommendations addressed to NATO.

The appeal issued by CEC, CCC and NCCCUSA, and supported by the WCC, calls on NATO "to ensure that the new NATO strategic concept:

• affirms NATO's support for the rapid global elimination of nuclear weapons and commits the Alliance to take programmatic action to advance this goal;

• commits NATO to reducing the alert status of nuclear weapons possessed by NATO members, and to pursuing effective arrangements for the rapid de-alerting of all nuclear weapons possessed by member states; and

• renounces the first-use of nuclear weapons by any NATO members under any circumstances, and commits NATO to the pursuit of equivalent commitments from other states possessing nuclear weapons."