Water cannons and baton-wielding military police were used against 200 nonviolent 'citizen inspectors' at the NATO headquarters May 27 in Brussels, Belgium, when they entered the base in an attempt to find evidence of NATO's involvement in the planning of illegally indiscriminate nuclear warfare. The cannons, above, were trained on fence cutters clearing the way through razor wire barricades erected in anticipation of the anti-war action. Over 270 were arrested at the base over three days, including Nukewatch staffer John LaForge.

The demonstrators had just completed a two-week-long peace walk that started from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Following a one-hour meeting inside the headquarters, NATO officials rejected the group's demands for a nuclear "No First Use" declaration, full disclosure of the Alliance's nuclear war plans, a pledge to negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention that will finally ban the bomb, and an immediate halt to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. Krista van Velzen, a spokesperson with For Mother Earth International which organized the walk, said of the impasse, "We will continue to inspect the official nuclear weapons states, as long as they violate international law." -John LaForge