Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Mohamed ElBaradei

  • Nuclear Security

    This article was originally published by the International Herald Tribune

    The 47 heads of state who will assemble in Washington next week for the world’s first Nuclear Security Summit should focus like a laser beam on the biggest potential threat to civilization.

    Psychologically, it is almost impossible to imagine terrorists exploding a nuclear bomb that devastates the heart of Moscow or Mumbai, New York or Cairo. Analytically, however, there’s only one difference between Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack that extinguished the lives of 3,000 people in New York, or the 11/26 attack that killed nearly 200 in Mumbai, and a nuclear Mumbai or 9/11 that could kill hundreds of thousands in a single blow. That difference is terrorists getting a nuclear bomb.

    No one who has examined the evidence has any doubt that terrorist groups — including Al Qaeda, Chechen separatists and Lashkar-e-Taiba — have shown serious interest and undertaken substantial efforts to acquire material and equipment for this purpose. The highly enriched uranium required to make an elementary nuclear bomb could be hidden inside a football.

    The big insight that motivates the summit is that the leaders assembled there have in their power the ways and means to successfully prevent nuclear terrorism. The key to success is to deny terrorists the means to achieve their deadliest aspirations.

    Fortunately, physics provides a syllogism that says: no fissile material, no mushroom cloud, no nuclear terrorism.

    All that the members of the international community have to do to prevent this ultimate catastrophe is to lock up all nuclear weapons and materials as securely as gold in Fort Knox or treasures in the Kremlin Armory. This is a big “all” — but it consists of actions we know how to take and can afford. Other powerful radioactive sources should be equally protected.

    How can this be done? The leaders who convene will address an issue the international community has so far been dragging its feet on — implementing the obligation states have already committed themselves to in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, to adopt “effective, appropriate measures to secure all nuclear materials.”

    In confronting this challenge, those assembled can apply many of the lessons learned by the United States and Russia over the past 18 years in their cooperative threat-reduction program, as well as the best practices and technologies developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    The bottom line by which the summit should be scored is whether as a result of this effort, states take specific actions, including the allocation of resources to make the world safer from a nuclear explosion by an extremist group.

    A number of states will announce actions that they have already taken in preparation for the summit. Others, we hope, will make unambiguous commitments to take observable actions. We trust these actions will be supported by every state, reflecting a global recognition that a nuclear explosion anywhere is a nuclear explosion everywhere.

    This Nuclear Security Summit focuses on the most urgent dimension of nuclear danger. But this is only one part of a larger, more complex agenda. The “New START” arms control agreement between the United States and Russia takes another step on the path to eliminating all nuclear arsenals. Next month, the Nonproliferation Review Conference will provide a further opportunity for international cooperation in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

    To address the array of nuclear threats and specifically the specter of a nuclear bomb exploding in one of our cities with consequences that will fundamentally change our lives and our world, the supreme requirement is for meaningful, sustained international cooperation.

    We applaud the leaders for their initiative in focusing on this grave challenge. Still, as with many international summits that have gone before, we will withhold judgment until we see what leaders actually do measured in terms of the challenge we face.

  • IAEA Head Proposes New Limits on Nuclear Materials

    Originally Published in U.N. Wire

    UNITED NATIONS — Saying “recent events have made it clear that the nonproliferation regime is under growing stress,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, yesterday suggested limiting the processing and production of nuclear materials that can be used for bombs and placing facilities under international control.

    In presenting his annual report to the General Assembly, El Baradei said, “In light of the increasing threat of proliferation, both by states and terrorists, one idea that may now be worth serious consideration is the advisability of limiting the processing of weapon-usable material in civilian nuclear programs, as well as the production of new material through reprocessing and enrichment, by agreeing to restrict these operations exclusively to facilities under multilateral control.”

    “Weapon-usable material” is plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

    Countries seeking nuclear weapons, most famously Iraq, have historically called their nuclear programs peaceful while developing a weapons capacity. ElBaradei’s proposal would build on recent initiatives to make it harder to disguise a weapons program as a source of energy for a country. One of those initiatives is the Additional Protocol to the IAEA safeguards agreements nations sign as part of their Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitment. The protocol allows the agency to conduct inspections of undeclared as well as declared nuclear sites.

    After it became clear in the early 1990s that Iraq had pursued a secret nuclear weapon development program while deceiving the IAEA inspectors working in the country under the NPT, “the international community committed itself to provide the agency the authority to strengthen its verification capability” by expanding inspections to include undeclared facilities, ElBaradei said. The authority is contained in a protocol which, he said, more than 150 countries have not yet signed. “The broader authority,” he said, “is still far from universal.”

    This drive for more intrusive inspections has played a part in the current debate over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran, which has announced its intention to sign the Additional Protocol, has received “considerable attention” this year, said ElBaradei. “Recently we have received what the Iranian authorities have said is a full and accurate declaration of its past and current nuclear activities and are in the process of verifying this declaration, which is key to our ability to provide comprehensive assurances,” he said.

    The United States says Iran is working on nuclear weapons and the IAEA hopes the data will lead to some conclusions. It is scheduled to address the assembly today. ElBaradei will report to his agency’s Board of Governors later this month on his findings. Ambassador Javad Zarif of Iran told the assembly the documents will show “that all Iranian nuclear activities are in the peaceful domain.”

    “Arbitrary and often politically motivated limitations and restrictions will only impede the ability of the IAEA to conduct its verification responsibilities,” Zarif added. Such restrictions will not lead a country to renounce nuclear power, he said, but rather, “In all likelihood, it will lead, as it has, to acquisition of the same peaceful technology from unofficial channels in a less than transparent fashion, thus exacerbating mutual suspicions.”

    Zarif said NPT membership should not be an impediment to peaceful uses of nuclear technology “while non-membership is rewarded by acquiescence, as is the case in the development of one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the Middle East” — a reference to Israel.

    ElBaradei said he is continuing to consult with Middle East governments “on the application of full-scope safeguards to all nuclear activities in the Middle East, and on the development of model agreements.” However, he regretted that “the prevailing situation” has prevented progress. He said any comprehensive settlement in the region “includes the establishment of the Middle East as a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.”

    ElBaradei also said it would be “prudent” for the United Nations and the IAEA to return to Iraq to “bring the weapons file to a closure.” He repeated the agency’s conclusion from earlier this year that “we found no evidence of the revival of nuclear activities prohibited” by the Security Council.

    The IAEA has two mandates concerning Iraq — the inspections imposed by the council and those mandated by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The agency has not been in Iraq under either mandate since the U.S. invasion in March. The council mandate “still stands,” ElBaradei said.

    The assembly is debating a draft resolution accepting the IAEA’s report. The draft acknowledges the agency’s annual report and “takes note” of various resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors, including on the application of safeguards, progress on the Additional Protocol and of the dealings with North Korea. No date has been set for voting on the draft. In previous years, North Korea has introduced amendments altering the references to its nuclear programs. Such proposals have been defeated.

    ElBaradei said that since the agency has not been in North Korea since December 2002 it “cannot provide any level of assurance about the non-diversion of nuclear material” since Pyongyang demanded IAEA inspectors leave the country last year. He also called for “comprehensive settlement of the Korean crisis through dialogue.” The Board of Governors referred the issue to the Security Council in February, but the council has not yet taken any action.

    Ambassador Kim Sam-hoon of South Korea said the North’s program “cannot be tolerated under any circumstance and … there is no substitute for North Korea’s complete, irreversible and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program.” Seoul “is committed to a diplomatic and peaceful resolution,” he added. North Korea is scheduled to speak today.

    Despite increased attention to the threat of nuclear material being diverted to terrorists, “deficiencies remain” in the security of nuclear and radiological materials, said ElBaradei. “Information in the agency database of illicit trafficking, combined with reports of discoveries of plans for radiological dispersal devices [the so-called ‘dirty bombs’], make it clear that a market continues to exist for obtaining and using radioactive sources for malevolent purposes.”

    Another sign of increased awareness of the potential diversion of nuclear material is the fact that the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material has gained 20 new parties in two years, he said. “States are now working on a much-needed amendment to broaden the scope of the convention, that I hope will be adopted soon,” ElBaradei said.

    Full Speech:
    http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n023.shtml 

  • Preemption Is Not The Model

    The threat of weapons of mass destruction is back, in this new century, as the most serious challenge to international peace and security. Current reports cite 10 to 15 countries as either having or seeking to acquire such weapons. Is Iraq unique, or is the war in Iraq the new model for solving nonproliferation concerns? Is there still hope for alternatives less unpredictable in outcome and less costly in terms of human life?

    In the bipolar world of the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was used to maintain an uneasy security that covered the superpowers, their allies and their spheres of influence. The end of the Cold War was one huge step forward, but the failure to capitalize on the opportunities it offered — to fill the void with a new, inclusive scheme for international security — may have taken us two steps back. Old ethnic conflicts and cultural disputes that had lain dormant both between and within nations were reawakened. The United Nations system of collective security, paralyzed during the Cold War, has not yet been able to reinvent itself to cope with these changing times and new threats. Longstanding conflicts, such as those in the Middle East and Kashmir and on the Korean Peninsula, have continued to fester with little prospect of settlement. And new conflicts have either been mishandled, as in Rwanda and Burundi, or dealt with outside the United Nations system, as in Kosovo.

    The result is to some extent a standoff: On one side is the sluggishness of the declared nuclear weapons states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) in moving forward on their commitments to disarm under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This sluggishness is matched on the other side by the foot-dragging of some nonnuclear-weapons states in enacting legal instruments that would empower the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation commitments. Between these two groups are several others: states that enjoy the protection of the nuclear “umbrella” of one or more of the nuclear weapon nations; states that remain outside the nonproliferation treaty — i.e., India, Israel and Pakistan; countries within the treaty that nonetheless are suspected of pursuing clandestine nuclear weapons programs; states that pursue the “poor man’s alternative” of chemical or biological weapons; and subnational terrorist groups that, in view of the events of September 2001, would not hesitate to acquire and use such weapons.

    Must we conclude, therefore, that it is futile to try to control weapons of mass destruction through a collective, rule-based system of international security — and that the only available alternative is a preemptive military strike based on a premise that a country may be harboring such weapons? I believe we must reform the former rather than resorting to the latter.

    This requires that the U.N. collective system of security be reinvigorated and modernized to match realities — with, for example, agreed limitations on the use of veto power and readily available U.N. forces that possess the flexibility to respond to a variety of situations. But it also requires that we understand the link between security and the underlying urge to acquire ever more potent weapons arsenals.

    The greatest incentives for acquiring weapons of mass destruction exist in regions of chronic tension and longstanding dispute. It is instructive that many suspected efforts to acquire such weapons are in the Middle East, a hotbed of conflict for more than a half-century. We cannot continue to pretend that old wounds, if left unattended, will heal of themselves. Settlements for these chronic disputes must be pursued in earnest, and weapons proliferation concerns must be treated in parallel, as part of the overall settlements.

    We must resolve to treat not only the symptoms but also the root causes of conflicts — foremost the divide between rich and poor, schisms between cultures and regimes in which human rights are brutally suppressed.

    Finally, no collective system of security is sustainable if it is premised on continuing the asymmetry between the nuclear haves and have-nots. As the Canberra Commission stated a few years ago, “the possession of nuclear weapons by any State is a constant stimulus to other States to acquire them.” The new vision of international security must work toward eliminating this asymmetry by delegitimizing weapons of mass destruction, and it must be inclusive in nature, guaranteeing that every nation that subscribes to the new system will be covered by the security “umbrella.”

    Only by eliminating the motivation to acquire weapons of mass destruction can we hope to significantly improve global security.
    * Mohamed ElBaradei is director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.