| It's the Grauniad, but even so. |
The number of potential nuclear weapons states could more than double in a few years unless the major powers take radical steps towards disarmament, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog has warned.
| Disarm yourselves, lest others nuke-up, he says. I think I prefer peace through greater firepower, and the willingness to use it. Perhaps that's why the UN didn't hire me, the time I didn't submit an application for Secretary General of the Security Council. |
ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the current international regime limiting the spread of nuclear weapons was in danger of falling apart under its own inequity. "Any regime ... has to have a sense of fairness and equity and it is not there," he said in an interview at his offices in Vienna.
| If it were fair, each Muslim country would have its own nukes, especially Egypt, home of the world's oldest civilization (or something like that, anyway), and Israel would be a glowing pit -- except for that mosque in Jerusalem, which Allah would protect with those special anti-nuke djinns Pakistani academics have studied so thoroughly in recent years. |
He has presided over the IAEA for more than 11 years
| During which time he has prevented Pakistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Wait -- he didn't? Well I'm sure he intended to, which must count for something. |
He argued that the only way back from the nuclear abyss was for the established nuclear powers to fulfil their NPT obligations and disarm as rapidly as possible. He said it was essential to generate momentum in that direction before the NPT comes up for review next April in New York. "There's a lot of work to be done but there are a lot of things we can do right away," ElBaradei said. "Slash the 27,000 warheads we have, 95% of which are in Russia and the US."
Only deep strategic cuts, coupled with internationally agreed bans on nuclear tests and on the production of weapons-grade fissile material, could restore the world's faith in arms control, he argued. "If some of this concrete action is taken before the NPT [conference], you would have a completely different environment. All these so-called virtual weapons states, or virtual wannabe weapons states, will think twice ... because then the major powers will have the moral authority to go after them and say: 'We are doing our part of the bargain. Now it is up to you.' "
 | I'm sure that will work. I also believe that clapping my little hands together will bring Tinker Bell back to life. |
ElBaradei won global fame -- and the Nobel peace prize for himself and his agency -- by standing up to the Bush and Blair governments over claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
| Proof, if anyone needed it, that the Nobel Peace Prize committee is as morally corrupt as the United Nations. |
His relationships with the Obama administration, and to some extent the Brown government, are better, since both have embraced banning nuclear weapons. Obama has started talks with Moscow on mutual cuts in arsenals.
| Joy no doubt reigns unbounded. |
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