Eliminate the need for nuclear weapons, WMD "weapons of terror". by Hans Blix, Mohamed ElBaradei 4:28pm 28th May, 2006   United Nations, June 1 (UPI)    Blix at U.N.: WMD "weapons of terror".    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed a new report calling for broad steps to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction.    Recommendations in the 231-page Independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission"s report presented Thursday range from outlawing them completely to convening a world summit on the issue.    Commission Chairman Hans Blix, a former chief U.N. arms inspector for Iraq, presented it to Annan.    A spokesman for the secretary-general called it "an important contribution to the debate on disarmament and non-proliferation" and urged the international community "to study the report and consider its recommendations."    It argues nuclear, biological and chemical arms are "the most inhumane of all weapons," capable of vast, indiscriminate and long-lasting destruction.    The report points out that so long as any country has these weapons, others will want them. "So long as any such weapons remain in any state"s arsenal, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident," the authors note, warning that "Any such use would be catastrophic."    Blix told reporters they are all "weapons of terror," designed to inflict "terror and panic."    Stocks remain "extraordinarily and alarmingly high," including 27,000 nuclear weapons, of which around 12,000 are still actively deployed, the report said.    While acknowledging that weapons of mass destruction "cannot be un-invented," the report said they can be outlawed, as biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made unthinkable.    "Compliance, verification and enforcement rules can, with the requisite will, be effectively applied," it said. "With that will, even the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is not beyond the world"s reach."    May 25, 2006    U.N. nuclear chief: world must alter ideas, by William C. Mann. ( Associated Press)      Unless the world abandons the assumption that nuclear weapons guarantee security, it risks a return to the "mutual assured destruction" policy that kept the world on the brink of ruin during the Cold War, the United Nations" top nuclear controller said Thursday.    Even worse, Mohamed ElBaradei said, continued development of nuclear weapons puts the world at risk of realizing the condition foreseen by former President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s of 20 to 30 nuclear powers.    "Efforts to control the spread of such weapons will only be delaying the inevitable -- a world in which each country or group has laid claim to its own nuclear weapon. Mutually assured destruction will once again be the absurd hallmark of civilization at its technological peak," ElBaradei told the graduating class of Johns Hopkins University"s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.    The concept that went by the macabre acronym MAD began in the 1950s and faded only after the breakup of the Soviet bloc beginning in the late 1980s. Its aim was to prevent nuclear annihilation through nuclear terror.    ElBaradei, who with his agency the International Atomic Energy Agency was awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for working against nuclear arms, said the only hope for avoiding a repetition of MAD is to change the world"s idea of security.    "No one has seriously taken up the challenge of developing an alternative approach to security that eliminates the need for nuclear deterrence," he said.    "But only when such an alternative system is created will nuclear-weapon states begin moving toward nuclear disarmament. And only when nuclear-weapon states move away from depending on these weapons for their security will the threat of nuclear proliferation by other countries by meaningfully reduced."    A rearrangement of global priorities is in order, he said.    In 2004, he said the world spent more than $1 trillion on weapons and $80 billion on official development aid.    "Experts tell us that, for an additional $65 billion per year, we could cut world hunger in half, put programs in place for clean water worldwide, enable reproductive health care for women everywhere, eradicate illiteracy and provide immunization for every child," ElBaradei said.    Already, he said, "as an international community, we have no difficulties in cooperating when it comes to regulating shipping, coordinating the use of airwaves or jointly fighting epidemics.    "But when it comes to how to resolve our differences, our approach dates back to the Stone Age, still rooted primitively in who carries the biggest club." Visit the related web page
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