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Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s John Ainslie sought to reassure backbenchers on Holyrood’s Europe and external relations committee yesterday over the SNP government’s claims it will remove nukes from Scottish soil.
The party has vowed to carry out the policy if independence is secured in September’s referendum, but has said it would also seek membership of US-led military alliance Nato.
But policy group the Red Paper Collective has raised doubts about whether independence will lead to nuclear weapons being removed from Scotland given the SNP’s support for joining Nato.
“A nuclear-free Scotland counts for little when it is part of a nuclear-armed alliance,” said its report co-author Pauline Bryan.
And when grilled at trade union Prospect’s national conference in Glasgow last month, deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon refused to say whether her government would allow nuclear-armed vessels to visit Scottish ports on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis.
But Mr Ainslie told MSPs yesterday Scotland still had the opportunity to end “a logjam in disarmament.”
Mr Ainslie said his organisation remained opposed to joining Nato.
But he added: “If the choice that Washington has is a non-nuclear Scotland in Nato or a non-nuclear Scotland that isn’t in Nato, Washington would probably prefer we were in it.”