LUXEMBOURG, 25 May 2007 — The UN atomic agency chief urged major world powers yesterday to help avert a nuclear catastrophe by slashing their arsenals to set an example to countries trying to develop such programs.
“We have to move away from a nuclear catastrophe,” said Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“Roughly 27,000 nuclear warheads remain in the arsenals of nine countries decades after the end of the Cold War,” he told an international conference in Luxembourg on preventing nuclear catastrophe.
“Virtually all nuclear weapons states are extending and modernizing their nuclear weapons arsenals well into the 21st century,” he said. “Many states have therefore started to question the credibility of the weapons states.”
He added that “plans to replenish and modernize these weapons create a pervasive sense of cynicism among many nonnuclear weapons states.” “We must find a way for disarmament to be taken seriously,” he said.
El-Baradei also urged the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the world’s top nuclear powers — to refrain from using the threat of force as a tool to dissuade countries from developing atomic weapons.
“We cannot bomb our way to security,” he said.
“Rather we should focus on addressing the underlying causes,” he said, listing growing poverty as a factor that leads to human rights abuses, humiliation and ultimately violence.
The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief said it was important to secure all parts of the process that could lead to nuclear weapons, through the surveillance of fuel stockpiles and tightening export controls.
“Our ultimate goal...should be to bring all such operations under multinational control so that no one country has exclusive capability to produce the material for nuclear weapons,” he said.
El-Baradei has come under pressure from the United States, Britain and France for saying this month that Iran should be allowed to keep some uranium enrichment, amid fears the Islamic Republic wants to develop an atomic bomb.
