ElBaradei: "Nuclear Feeds Nuclear."

Le Nouvel Observateur

Friday 26 May 2006

The IAEA director deems that the great powers must choose between renouncing nuclear weapons and accepting eventual proliferation.

The United States and the other powers refusing to renounce their nuclear arsenals thus encourage other countries to follow their example, and the world could soon have to face a multitude of countries endowed with nuclear weapons, Mohamed ElBaradei warned Thursday,

"Nuclear feeds nuclear. As long as certain countries continue to insist on the indispensable character of nuclear weapons for their security, other countries will want to procure them. It is impossible to escape this simple truth," declared the International Atomic Energy Agency's director general.

Crossroads

"We have reached a crossroads with regard to nuclear weapons. Either we begin to distance ourselves from a security based on nuclear weapons or we must resign ourselves to the prediction formulated by President (John F.) Kennedy in the 1960s of a world with 20-30 nuclear powers," continued the 2005 Nobel Peace Laureate, speaking before a group of International Relations students at Johns Hopkins University.

These statements take on a particular resonance in view of the crisis related to Iran's nuclear program. The United States demands that Iran renounce its nuclear ambitions. Washington suspects Teheran of seeking to endow itself with nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian program - which Iran denies.

Alternative System

Furthermore, ElBaradei emphasized that efforts aimed at controlling international technology and knowledge transfers were more and more complicated by the development of information techniques.

In the end, these efforts against nuclear proliferation "will only delay the inevitable," ElBaradei predicted.

He consequently invited the students who made up his audience to establish "an alternative system of collective security ... that eliminates the need for nuclear deterrence."

"Only when the nuclear powers have succeeded in no longer being dependent upon these weapons for their security will the threat of nuclear proliferation from other countries be significantly reduced," insisted ElBaradei.

He said he was himself incapable of presenting an alternative system.

Nonetheless, he added, if the international community intensified its efforts to improve living standards in developing countries, "the probability of a conflict will drop immediately."

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Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

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