Drops reference in fourth paragraph to nuclear weapons being lost
By Wojciech Moskwa and Aasa Christine Stoltz
OSLO (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog saidon Tuesday that global nuclear security was faltering andcalled on leaders to refocus on nuclear issues and kick-start anew round of disarmament talks.
"We need to bolster the non-proliferation regime and moveon to nuclear disarmament," said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head ofthe International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"We are at a crucial juncture. The system is faltering,"ElBaradei told a conference in the Norwegian capital where heand the IAEA received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
He said the IAEA was aware of 150 cases per year of nuclearmaterial going missing, which could potentially end up in thehands of "organised crime or worse -- extremists".
ElBaradei said nuclear topics, leading issues in the ColdWar, had "gone out of fashion and almost disappeared from theinternational agenda", yielding to causes like global warming.
"There continue to be many gaps in the current securitysystem which make it vulnerable to abuse ... This is actuallythe greatest danger we face -- that nuclear weapons or materialcould fall into the wrong hands," said ElBaradei.
He said that if extremists gained nuclear weapons theywould "almost certainly be used", since the concept of mutualdeterrence that exists between countries with atomic arms was"totally irrelevant to extremist ideology."
ElBaradei did not mention any such groups or countries byname. He also declined to take questions about Iran's nuclearprogramme. Western powers fear Tehran wants to build atomicbombs, while Iran maintains its programme is for powergeneration.
NUCLEAR PEARL HARBOR
Former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz told theconference that global tensions remained high due to theproliferation of destructive weapons and said world leadersmust refocus on nuclear issues immediately.
"We can't wait for a nuclear Pearl Harbor," said Shultz,the top U.S. diplomat under President Ronald Reagan.
ElBaradei said a nuclear-free world was "not impossible"and urged significant reductions in nuclear arsenals andchanges in the status of nuclear weapons systems to reduce therisk of accident or malfunction.
He also called for a wider role and more funds for theIAEA, whose multinational character made it better equipped tohandle a world in which some states hold nuclear weapons as adeterrent and others are prohibited from doing the same.
"We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morallyreprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of massdestruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on themfor their security," he said.
The United States and Russia jointly hold 95 percent of theworld's nuclear arsenal of about 27,000 warheads -- many ofwhich are hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs whichobliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two.
"A handful of missiles carried today on a single bomber orsubmarine could wipe out the entire population of a country,"ElBaradei said. "That message needs to be brought home to awider public."
