Scottish Green Party: No to NATO
The Press Association
October 6, 2012
Green leader attacks SNP Nato plans
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“Nato is an organisation whose design is about the aggressive projection of power around the world. It is an antique, outdated and defunct organisation, in my view, and I think we should have nothing to do with it.”
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Plans by the SNP leadership to keep Scotland in Nato after independence have been branded “offensive” by Green leader Patrick Harvie.
Opening his party conference in Glasgow, he took a swipe at the policy U-turn, suggesting people who want independence as a way of removing the Trident nuclear deterrent from Scottish waters will be feeling let down.
Despite the criticism, he wants Greens to officially endorse the wider Yes Scotland pro-independence movement, portrayed by opponents as SNP-dominated.
“It has been a bad year for anyone who signed up for the idea of Scottish independence because more than anything else they wanted to get rid of Trident and have no alliance with a nuclear agency in Scotland,” he told delegates inside the Maryhill Burgh Hall.
“The idea that we should vote for independence because it lets us join Nato? This to me is an offensive idea.
“The idea that we sign up a nuclear alliance, the implication of which is to ask other countries to deploy nuclear weapons on our behalf, and then have a debate about whether they should be moved from the Clyde is a nonsense.
“Nato is an organisation whose design is about the aggressive projection of power around the world. It is an antique, outdated and defunct organisation, in my view, and I think we should have nothing to do with it.”
First Minister Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, is considering abandoning the Nationalists’ historic opposition to keeping Nato membership after a vote for independence.
The SNP will debate the change of tack at its conference later this month.
Before his opening speech, Mr Harvie urged his party to make a “judgment call” and get behind Yes Scotland.
Completely agree with his sentiment about NATO – let’s hope that if Scotland does choose to be made independent, they will make sensible choices about their newly gained powers.