nuclear-news

Mohamed ElBaradei writes on nuclear weapons proliferation

.So long as nuclear weapons remain a security strategy for a few possessor countries, with umbrella arrangements that extend that security to a secondary circle of “allied” countries; so long as others are left out in the cold, the proliferation risk continues.

The uranium cocktail circuit Tehelka – Arundhati Ghosh, 27 may 11 FOR MOST of the last century, nuclear weapons were held to be the ‘currency of power’; unfortunately, even today, this belief refuses to die. In The Age of Deception, Mohamed ElBaradei, perhaps one of the most outspoken and therefore controversial directors-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has focused on the major nuclear crises during his tenure, the second Gulf War, the challenge to the Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT from North Korea, the Iran question and the discovery of Pakistan’s AQ Khan network.

He has illustrated candidly and in detail how countries with nuclear weapons and power sought to use that power to constrain the ambitions of other countries to acquire those weapons and in this tension, deception has played a role on both sides.

As ElBaradei says with some acerbity, “The (nuclear) threat will persist as long as the international community continues to address only the symptoms of each new nuclear proliferation challenge: waging war against one country, making a deal with a second, issuing sanctions in a third and seeking regime change in still another. So long as nuclear weapons remain a security strategy for a few possessor countries, with umbrella arrangements that extend that security to a secondary circle of “allied” countries; so long as others are left out in the cold, the proliferation risk continues. With the emergence of sophisticated extremist groups, for whom the threat of retaliation is irrelevant, the nuclear deterrent has become no more than a temporary if not delusional security strategy.”

ElBaradei was clearly referring to Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Iran and the contortions in negotiations that took place to achieve political agendas… Tehelka – India’s Independent Weekly News Magazine

May 28, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | resources - print