Britain announced for the first time on Wednesday that it had set a limit on its nuclear weapons stockpile, at 225 warheads, and said it would re-examine its policy on use of nuclear weapons.
The announcements, timed to coincide with a major UN nuclear non-proliferation conference in New York, reflect a drive by Britain’s new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to be more open about the country’s nuclear arsenal. Previously, Britain had only made public the number of operationally available nuclear warheads for its Trident missile-armed submarine fleet, and had given no figure for the overall stockpile. “For the first time, the government will make public the maximum number of nuclear warheads that the UK will hold in its stockpile. In the future our overall stockpile will not exceed 225 nuclear warheads,” foreign secretary William Hague said. The ceiling on operationally available nuc-lear warheads would stay at 160. The extra warheads are to allow for “processing, maintenance and logistic management”, the government said. Britain had long said it would only consider using nuclear wea-pons in “extreme circumstances” of self-defence, including the defence of Nato allies.
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Greek PM’s phone cut off by mistake
Athens : Greek telecom engineers cut off the telephone line to the Prime Minister’s house while attempting to disconnect a customer who was behind in payments, the telephone company said.
The Athens phone number of the customer in arrears was the same as that of PM George Papandreou’s home number save for one digit, telecoms company OTE said in a statement.
Greece is suffering its worst financial crisis and many are struggling to pay their bills as the government cuts wages and raises taxes to try to pay off its debt.
OTE’s chairman wrote a letter to Mr Papandreou to explain the mistake and engineers went to the PM’s house immediately after they were informed of the problem. —Reuters