Greenpeace’s deck of most-wanted world leaders

By Damir Ahmad, IOL Russia Correspondent

MOSCOW, May 3 (IslamOnline.net) – The International Greenpeace distributed a deck of cards similar to the U.S. deck of most-wanted Iraqi officials, replacing them with world leaders who possess weapons of mass destruction.

"It's an exact copy (of the U.S. deck) in terms of the design and layout," the spokesman for the environmental organization, William Peden, was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agencies as telling the Salzburger Nachrichten on Friday, May 2.

"The idea is to provide delegates with something that's not a boring piece of paper," Peden said.

"It's something interesting and innovative that they can actually learn from -- so it's an educational tool as well."

U.S. President George W. Bush replaced toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein as the ace of spades, while Russia’s Vladimir Putin, France’s Jacques Chirac, China’s Hu Jintao, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israel’s Ariel Sharon in addition to a number of other leaders replaced other Iraqi officials on Greenpeace’s deck of "most-wanted" leaders.

The Geneva-based organization handed out 600 decks to delegates at a 5-day conference on the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which opened Wednesday, April 30.

"We haven't had any negative comments -- not even from the U.S. delegation," said Peden. "They're such a hot item."

"It's actually being used by delegates in their speeches and they love it because it's full of short snappy facts about the situation of nuclear weapons around the world," Peden added.

He further said that the number of nuclear weapons produced since 1945 has hit 128, 000 missiles.

Peden said countries which possess such weapons are on the rise, noting that Israel topped the list with some 59 ballistic missiles produced over the past ten years.

Israel possesses 200 nuclear-headed missiles

Along with photographs of Bush and seven other leaders are details of the number of nuclear weapons their countries possess.

The deck notes that Putin comes with around 18,000 nuclear-headed missiles, Bush with 10,600, Jintao with 400, Chirac with 350, Sharon with 200, Blair with 200, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf with 50 and India’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee with 35 missiles.

Under the nonproliferation treaty, the declared nuclear powers of the 1960s -- the United States, China, France, Russia and Britain -- were meant to reduce their arsenals, halt the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure nuclear technology was used only for peaceful purposes.

However, the accord has failed to stop other nations from becoming nuclear powers.

Established in 1956, Greenpeace is the world’s most important environmental organization with some 300 million members all over the world.