ElBaradei Says, "Nuke Club Expanding"
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Courtesy Of: The Herald Sun
From Correspondents in Washington
26 May 2006

The US and other major powers who insist on retaining atomic arsenals set an example that encourages others to follow suit and the world may soon confront a vast expansion in nuclear-armed nations, the head of the UN watchdog said today.

Mohammed ElBaradei, delivering the commencement address at a prestigious foreign policy school, said it is becoming harder to control the spread of nuclear weapons, despite the international community's best efforts.

..."Nukes breed nukes. As long as some nations continue to insist that nuclear weapons are essential to their security, other nations will want them. There is no way around this simple truth," Mr El Baradei told the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

"When it comes to nuclear weapons, we are reaching a fork in the road. Either we must begin moving away from a security system based on nuclear weapons or we should resign ourselves to President (John F) Kennedy's 1960s prediction of a world with 20 to 30 nuclear weapons states," he said.

...But "security is no longer as simple as building a wall" and controls aimed at blocking nuclear technology transfers are "no longer enough" in a world in which advanced communications have made it easy to share knowledge, he said.

Eventually, efforts to control the spread of such weapons "will only be delaying the inevitable," he said.

Mr ElBaradei challenged the graduates to help develop an "alternative system of collective security...that eliminates the need for nuclear deterrence."

"Only when nuclear-weapons states move away from depending on these weapons for their security will the threat of nuclear proliferation by other countries be meaningfully reduced," he said.

He said he did not know what the new security system should look like but suggested that, if the world intensified its efforts to raise living standards in underdeveloped countries, "the likelihood of conflict will immediately begin to drop."

Source:
http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,19261631%255E1702,00.html