THE NUMBER of potential nuclear weapons states could more than double in the next few years unless the major powers take radical steps towards disarmament, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has warned.
In an interview with the Guardiannewspaper, Mohamed ElBaradei said the threat of proliferation was particularly grave in the Middle East, a region he described as a "ticking bomb".
Dr ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the current international regime limiting the spread of atomic weapons was in danger of falling apart under its own inequity. “Any regime . . . has to have a sense of fairness and equity and it is not there,” Dr ElBaradei said in an interview at his offices in Vienna.
He has presided over the IAEA for more than 11 years and is due to retire in November at the age of 67. A bitter diplomatic battle is under way over his successor.
The IAEA director general is the custodian of a global arms control regime that is increasingly beleaguered. It was built around the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and the goal of restricting membership of the nuclear club to five postwar powers. It has been under strain in the last four decades, with Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea developing weapons outside the NPT. But now Dr ElBaradei says the system is in danger of collapse, with an abrupt spread in nuclear weapons technology.
“We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power, you are buying insurance against attack. That is not lost on those who do not have nuclear weapons, particularly in [conflict] regions.”
He predicted that the next wave of proliferation would involve “virtual nuclear weapons states”, who can produce plutonium or highly enriched uranium and possess the knowhow to make warheads, but who stop just short of assembling a weapon. “This is the phenomenon we see now and what people worry about in Iran. And this phenomenon goes much beyond Iran. Pretty soon . . . you will have nine weapons states and probably another 10 or 20 virtual weapons states.”
He continued: “When you see a lot of concern about the Middle East, it’s a result of people feeling totally repressed by their own government and feeling unjustly treated by the outside world. This combination makes it a ticking bomb . . . so don’t be surprised if we continue to see more and more countries trying to develop nuclear weapons, and more and more extremist groups trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons or nuclear materials.”
Dr ElBaradei described the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a terrorist group as the greatest threat facing the world, and pointed to the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan: “We are worried because there is a war in a country with nuclear weapons.
“We are worried because we still have 200 cases of illicit trafficking of nuclear material a year reported to us. Whether these are all the cases, whether this is the tip of the iceberg – we do not know what we do not know.”
The only way back from the abyss, he argued, was for the established nuclear powers to fulfil their NPT obligations and disarm as rapidly as possible. – (Guardian service)