The world has seen years of seemingly fruitless civilian protest against nuclear weapons. But as Jeremy Rose of the SWF Media Pool reports, a new groundswell of protest among those who once had their fingers on the nuclear trigger may finally provide hope that the next millennium could be nuclear-weapons free.

For a brief period after the end of the Cold War, it was possible to believe that the threat of nuclear war was finally receding.

But any hopes that the world was entering an era free of the fear of nuclear apocalypse were dashed by India and Pakistan's tit for tat nuclear tests earlier this year.

And "sub-critical" nuclear tests carried out by both the United States of America and Russia within the past month have simply confirmed that the nuclear arms race is far from over.

The tests have failed to ignite the mass anti-nuclear demonstrations that saw hundreds of thousands of people around the world take to the streets in protest during the Cold War.

But a mobilization of a different sort, and one that is if anything even more dramatic, is underway. Sixty-four retired admirals and generals, from around the world, have this year called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Among their number are General Lee Butler, a former head of the United States strategic air command, and Commander Robert Green of Britain's Royal Navy. Both men spent much of their working lives in charge of huge nuclear arsenals. Both are now staunchly committed to ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

"As a nation we have no greater responsibility than to bring the nuclear era to close," General Butler told the National Press Club in Washington in February this year.

"We cannot sit in silent acquiescence to the faded homilies of the nuclear priesthood. It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason and the rightful interest of humanity."

During the same month, 117 prominent civilians, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, former president of the U.S.S.R., Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, former British Minister of Defense Lord Denis Healey, and former president of Canada Pierre Trudeau issued a statement calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

"The world is not condemned to live forever with threats of nuclear conflict, or the anxious, fragile peace imposed by nuclear deterrence. Such threats are intolerable and such a peace is unworthy. The sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons invokes a moral imperative for their elimination. That is our mandate. Let us begin," their statement concluded.

Last year, a coalition of peace groups, including the Nobel Peace prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the State of the World Forum, and the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms, formed the Middle Power Initiative. Begun at the urging of Douglas Roche, former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament, its aim is to mobilize key middle-power states to pressure countries holding nuclear weapons to begin the process of disarmament.

Then on June 8 of this year, the leaders of South Africa, Sweden, Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Slovenia, and New Zealand issued a declaration building on the International Court of Justice's 1996 finding that there exists an obligation on the part of nuclear weapon states "to pursue and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament."

Announcing the initiative at the U.N. General Assembly, South African president Nelson Mandela recalled that the very first resolution of the U.N., adopted in January 1946, called for the elimination from national arsenals of atomic weapons and all other major weapons and lamented the fact that "we still do not have concrete and generally accepted proposals supported by a clear commitment by the nuclear-weapon states to the speedy, final and total elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons capabilities."

President Mandela then outlined a draft resolution being proposed by the eight nations entitled: "Towards a Nuclear Weapons Free World: The Need for a New Agenda."

That the retired military, civilian, and political leaders calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons have the enthusiastic support of a large proportion of the world's population seems beyond doubt.

A recent poll by Celinda Lake of Lake Sosin Snell and Associates found that 87% of all Americans think the U.S. should negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons just as the world has done for chemical and biological weapons. And 84% said they would feel safer if they knew for sure that all countries, including the U.S., had eliminated their nuclear arsenals.

Those sentiments seem likely to be shared by citizens across the globe. A worldwide petition with nearly 100 million signatures calling for nuclear weapons to be outlawed was presented to the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 1995.

Earlier this year a petition calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons collected more than 13 million signatures in Japan alone - a country whose citizens for obvious reasons have often taken a leading role in efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

There is, however, little evidence that the anti-nuclear message is getting through to those who have the power to begin the process of ridding the world of the threat of nuclear war.

It is estimated that the five officially recognized nuclear states, the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain and France, jointly possess 35,000 nuclear weapons. Estimates vary on the size of the arsenals of the undeclared nuclear weapon states of Israel, India and Pakistan. But however small, the three countries between them have the capacity to wipe that most politically fragile of regions off the map.

The sub-critical tests carried out by both Russia and the U.S. are proof, if any were needed, that the major nuclear powers are continuing to develop new weapons despite the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Data gathered from the sub-critical tests combined with computer simulated "virtual nuclear explosions" have simply replaced the tests of old.

The U.S.'s disregard of Article Six of the Non-Proliferation Treaty - which calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons - was recently confirmed in the leaked "U.S. President's Decision Directive on Nuclear Weapons Policy." It provides guidelines for maintaining nuclear deterrence indefinitely and allows for the use of nuclear weapons against states in possession of chemical or biological weapons.

The Washington Post described the directive as "frightening in its extension of the proposed use of nuclear weapons as a cornerstone of U.S. national security for the indefinite future."

Meanwhile, the possibility of proliferation moving beyond nation states to terrorist organizations seems more and more probable. Turkish police this year arrested eight men attempting to sell 4.5kg (10lbs) of mainly unrefined uranium smuggled out of Russia. Istanbul police, posing as buyers, detained four Turks, three Kazakhs and an Azerbaijani in a joint operation with Turkish intelligence agents. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Possibly the only good thing to have come out of India and Pakistan's entry into the nuclear arms race is the emergence of a new generation of intellectuals prepared to commit themselves to the Herculean task of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

Foremost among these has been Arundhati Roy, the best-selling author of The God of Small Things.

"The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made," she wrote earlier this year. "If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 4,600,000,000 years old.

"It could end in an afternoon."

Roy, the retired military men, the former leaders of the world's major superpowers and millions of ordinary citizens around the world are working towards a new millennium which is not clouded by the threat of nuclear war.

Ironically, computer experts are warning that the so-called YK2 problem, or millennium bug, could trigger a nuclear war if the weapons aren't taken off alert before the new millennium dawns.