"If the world does not change course, we risk Nuclear Self Destruction" - Mohamed ElBaradei by Reuters / Inter Press Service 11:54am 12th Feb, 2004   February 12, 2004    If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction    VIENNA - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday the world could be headed for destruction if it does not stop the spread of atomic weapons technology, which has become widely accessible.    In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that nuclear technology, once virtually unobtainable, is now obtainable through "a sophisticated worldwide network able to deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons."    Above all ElBaradei echoed President Bush's call in a speech on Wednesday for states to tighten up the control of their companies' nuclear exports to proliferators.    ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general, said the world must act quickly because inaction would a create a proliferation disaster.    "The supply network will grow, making it easier to acquire nuclear weapon expertise and materials. Eventually, inevitably, terrorists will gain access to such materials and technology, if not actual weapons," he wrote.    "If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction," ElBaradei said.    The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted last week that he and scientists from his Khan Research Laboratory in Pakistan leaked nuclear secrets.    They are believed to have been part of a global nuclear black market organized to help countries under embargo such as Iran, North Korea and Libya skirt international sanctions and obtain nuclear technology that could be used to make weapons.    The massive illicit network has touched on at least 15 countries around the world.    ElBaradei said the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the global pact aimed at stopping the spread of atomic weapons, needed to be revisited and toughened to bring it in line with the demands of the 21st century.    He said it should not be possible to withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did last year, while the tougher inspections in the NPT Additional Protocol should be mandatory in all countries. Currently fewer than 40 of the more than 180 NPT signatories have approved the protocol.    NUCLEAR EXPORT CONTROLS    ElBaradei said that the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 40-nation group of countries that work together to prevent the export of peaceful nuclear technology to countries that might want weapons, needed to be transformed into a binding treaty.    "The current system relies on a gentlemen's agreement that is not only non-binding, but also limited in its membership: it does not include many countries with growing industrial capacity," he wrote.    "And even some members fail to control the exports of companies unaffiliated with government enterprise," he added.    ElBaradei called for the production of fissile material for weapons to be halted and enrichment technology restricted.    He said people who assist proliferators should be treated as criminals and states should eradicate loopholes that enable sensitive exports to slip past regulators.    He also called on the atomic weapons states who signed the NPT -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France -- to move toward disarmament as called for in the pact.    In a clear jab at the United States, which plans to forge ahead with research into the so-called mini nukes, ElBaradei said the world must drop the idea that nuclear weapons are fine in the hands of some countries and bad in the hands of others.    "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security -- and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use," he said.    © 2004 ReutersLtd    February 12, 2004    "New U.S. Plans for Nukes Hypocritical, Say Experts" by Thalif Deen. (Published by the Inter Press Service)    UNITED NATIONS - Proposed new U.S. curbs on the proliferation of nuclear weapons are fundamentally hypocritical, U.S. academics, military analysts and peace activists said Wednesday.    ''(U.S.) President George Bush seems committed to writing a new chapter in the grotesque saga of U.S. nuclear policy: 'do as we say, not as we do','' Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.    Solomon was responding to a major policy statement by Bush, who told the National Defense University on Wednesday that Washington plans to limit the number of nations permitted to produce nuclear fuel, in its attempt to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).    ''We must confront the danger with open eyes and unbending purpose,'' Bush said. ''I've made clear to all the policy of this nation: America will not permit the terrorists and dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons.''    Solomon said that throughout the nuclear era, ''the U.S. president has claimed the right to play ”nuclear God”, proclaiming which nations have a holy right to nuclear weapons, and which nations would be guilty of a terrible sin by acquiring nuclear weapons''.    ''But even the world's only superpower cannot force the nations of the world to worship the edicts from Washington,'' said Solomon, co-author of 'Killing our Own: the Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation'.    Currently, there are five declared nuclear powers, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia. The other three countries known to possess nuclear weapons are India, Pakistan and Israel. But U.S. intelligence believes that even North Korea has successfully gone nuclear.    The Bush administration went to war with Iraq last March on the grounds that it had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. But none have been found so far. The United States has also accused Iran and Syria of developing WMD. Both countries have denied the charge.    Last week the head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed he helped transfer nuclear technology to Libya. Last December, Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi publicly proclaimed he was dismantling his proposed nuclear weapons programs.    ''The Bush administration is being hypocritical by criticizing other countries for nuclear proliferation while it continues to develop nuclear weapons of its own,'' says Natalie Goldring, executive director of programs on global security and disarmament at the University of Maryland.    ''Preventing further proliferation of nuclear weapons is a vital national security. But the Bush administration has undermined its credibility by pursuing new nuclear weapons programs, and moving towards resuming nuclear testing,'' Goldring told IPS.    She said the Pakistani network might be just the tip of the iceberg. ''President Bush is correct to devote more attention to non-proliferation. But we also need to devote the financial resources necessary to control nuclear weapons material. The Bush administration has not done so,'' she added.    Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS the Bush administration's ''rank hypocrisy of nuclear non-proliferation'' could not be more apparent.    The United States, he said, is already in ''material breach'' of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which says, ''each of the parties to the treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.''    ''The Bush administration also stands in anticipatory breach of the so-called negative security assurances that the United States government gave to the NPT non-nuclear weapons states, that it would not use nuclear weapons against them in return for their renewal and indefinite extension of the NPT,'' said Boyle, author of 'The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence.'    He said Bush had already ordered the Pentagon to target several non-nuclear weapons states, a move that goes to the very heart of the bargain behind the NPT.    Both Boyle and Solomon also pointed to the U.S. double standard in curbing nuclear weapons in the Arab world but ignoring Israel's nuclear arsenal.    ''In the Middle East, the big nuclear elephant in the living room -- which Bush refuses to acknowledge as a problem -- is Israel,'' said Solomon.    When former chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix arrived in Baghdad in Nov 2002, he expressed hope for a ''zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East as a whole''.    Solomon said Blix was referring to actions taken by the U.N. Security Council after the 1991 Gulf War that acknowledged the need for a nuclear-free zone for the entire region, including Iran and Israel.    ''The U.S. government cannot make a reasonable case as to why it's OK for Israel to have a stockpile of about 200 nuclear warheads but it's not OK for any other nation in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons technology,'' he said.    ''As for the U.S. government, it has arrogantly violated its obligations under the (non-proliferation) treaty by not only failing to work toward nuclear disarmament, but also by continuing to develop even more technologically advanced nuclear weapons, including the current push for 'bunker-busting' nuclear arms that reflect ongoing Pentagon interest in using nuclear weapons for war-fighting,'' he added.    © 2004 Copyright IPS - Inter Press Service
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