Fear of new arms race in Middle East as Iran's rivals tell UN of interest in nuclear power

Experts fear states may use fossil fuels' soaring cost as cover for their military ambitions, writes Joby Warrick.

Experts fear states may use fossil fuels' soaring cost as cover for their military ambitions, writes Joby Warrick.

AT LEAST 40 developing countries, from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America, have recently approached UN officials to signal interest in starting nuclear power programmes, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to US and international nuclear officials and arms control experts.

Much of the new interest is driven by economic considerations, particularly the soaring cost of fossil fuels. But for some Middle Eastern states with ready access to huge stocks of oil or natural gas, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the investment in nuclear power appears to be linked partly to concerns about a future regional arms race stoked in part by Iran's alleged interest in such an arsenal, the officials said.

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"We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians," a senior US government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology said. He declined to speak on the record because of diplomatic sensitivities. "The big question is: at what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?"

Although the United Arab Emirates has a proven oil reserve of 100 billion barrels, the world's sixth-largest, in January it signed a deal with a French company to build two nuclear reactors. Wealthy neighbours Kuwait and Bahrain are also planning nuclear plants, as are Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Jordan.

Even Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, last year announced plans to purchase a nuclear reactor, which it says is needed to produce electricity; it is one of 11 Middle Eastern states now engaged in starting or expanding nuclear power programmes.

Meanwhile, two of Iran's biggest rivals in the region, Turkey and Egypt, are moving forward with ambitious nuclear projects. Both countries abandoned any pursuit of nuclear power decades ago but are now on course to develop seven nuclear power plants - four in Egypt and three in Turkey - over the next decade.

Egypt's ambassador to the United States, Nabil Fahmy, told a recent gathering of Middle Eastern and nonproliferation experts that his country's decision was unrelated to Iran's nuclear activities. But he acknowledged that commercial nuclear power "does give you technology and knowledge", and warned that a nuclear arms race may be inevitable unless the region's leaders agree to ban such weapons.

"We continue to take the high road, but there isn't much oxygen there, and it is very lonely," Fahmy told the gathering in Washington at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. He predicted: "Without a comprehensive nuclear accord, you will have a proliferation problem in the Middle East, and it will be even worse in 10 years than it is today."

Many countries involved in nuclear expansion have stressed their peaceful intentions. Some, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, publicly vowed never to pursue uranium enrichment or fuel reprocessing - technologies that can be used to create fissile materials for nuclear weapons. But some arms control experts say the sudden interest cannot be fully explained by rising oil prices.

"This is not primarily about nuclear energy. It's a hedge against Iran," said Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear policy and author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. "They're starting their engines. It takes decades to build a nuclear infrastructure, and they're beginning to do it now. They're saying, 'If there's going to be an arms race, we're going to be in it'."

Although US intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran halted its research into making nuclear weapons five years ago, the Islamic republic still seeks to make enriched uranium with centrifuges at its vast underground facility at Natanz. It is now operating about 3,000 centrifuges, and plans to increase the number to 50,000.

While Iran insists that the uranium will be used only to make electricity, the US and its European allies have sought to dissuade Tehran from pursuing the technology by pushing ever tougher sanctions through the UN Security Council.

Iran's neighbours, convinced that a nuclear-armed Tehran is now likely, are keeping their own options open, nuclear experts say.

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and a winner with the IAEA of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has likened the pursuit of "latent" nuclear capability to buying an insurance policy.

"You don't really even need to have a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei said at a recent international conference of security officials in Munich. "It's enough to buy yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it. Let's not kid ourselves: 90 per cent of it is insurance, a deterrence."

- (LA Times-Washington Post)