Nobel prize winner 'a joke'
2005-10-07 13:06
Paris - A French green group on Friday blasted the choice of the United Nations's nuclear watchdog for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, saying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had failed lamentably to prevent nuclear proliferation.
Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by "promoting" civilian nuclear power, it had enabled countries to build atomic bombs.
"The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty," Sortir du Nucleaire said in a press statement.
"India, Pakistan and Israel have joined the five 'great powers' (the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain) in having an unjustifiable right to possessing nuclear weapons and in not meeting their pledges on nuclear disarmament.
Wanting to please US
"Recent developments (Iran, North Korea etc.) have confirmed the IAEA's patent failure," it said.
Greenpeace International spokesperson Mike Townsley acknowledged that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had been "a voice of sanity" in his advocacy of a nuclear-free Middle East.
But, Townsley told AFP, ElBaradei was trapped by the IAEA's "contradictory role, as nuclear policeman and nuclear salesman."
The agency promoted nuclear energy and at the same sought to prevent countries that use this technology from making nuclear bombs, he said.
The Nobel Committee said the IAEA's work was "of incalculable importance" at a time when disarmament efforts "appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role."
In Paris, other experts voiced concerns that the civilian nuclear industry - dealt a crippling blow by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster - is on the rise once more.
Nuclear power is becoming eagerly pursued in China and India to help meet surging energy needs at a time of expensive, vulnerable oil supplies.
And in Europe, some countries that vowed to scrap or freeze their nuclear power programmes are now discreetly looking at reviving them to meet their commitments on greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels.
Meanwhile in Nagasaki, Senji Yamaguchi, a nuclear bomb survivor nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, on Friday accused the prize committee of passing over his group so as not to offend the United States.
Yamaguchi, whose face is permanently disfigured from the 1945 attack on Nagasaki, had been seen as a frontrunner for the award for his work with Nihon Hidankyo, a group of survivors of the nuclear bombings nominated repeatedly for the Nobel.
"I don't understand why Nihon Hidankyo didn't get the award this year. It makes me wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is paying special consideration to a certain country," Yamaguchi, 75, told reporters at his nursing home.
"The United States is responsible for not being able to stop other countries from possessing nuclear weapons," he said.
- AFP