Many can make nukes - IAEA
2004-09-20 21:26
Vienna - More than 40 countries with peaceful nuclear programmes could retool them to make weapons, said the head of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency on Monday.
The remark came amid new US and European demands that Iran give up technology capable of producing such arms.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggested in a keynote address to the IAEA general conference that it was time to tighten world policing of nuclear activities and to stop relying on information volunteered by countries.
Beyond the declared nuclear arms-holding countries, "some estimates indicate that 40 countries or more now have the know-how to produce nuclear weapons," ElBaradei told the conference.
"We are relying primarily on the continued good intentions of these countries, intentions, which... could... be subject to rapid change."
His comments appeared prompted by a series of revelations of proliferation or suspected illicit nuclear activities over the past two years.
Libya last year revealed a clandestine nuclear arms program and announced it would scrap it;
North Korea is threatening to activate a weapons program;
Iran is being investigated for what the United States says is evidence it was trying to make nuclear arms; and
South Korea recently said it had conducted secret experiments with plutonium and enriched uranium, both possible components of weapons programs.
ElBaradei linked the need for strengthened controls to concerns about the international nuclear black market, which supplied both Iran and Libya and whose existence was revealed last year.
More than a dozen European countries
The "relative ease with which a multinational illicit network could be set up and operate demonstrates clearly the inadequacy" of the present controls on nuclear exports, he said.
ElBaradei did not name the countries capable of quickly turning peaceful nuclear activities into weapons programmes.
But more than a dozen European countries with either power-producing nuclear reactors or large-scale research reactors are among them, as well as South Africa, countries in Asia, Canada, and countries in Latin America.
Iran's secretly developed enrichment programme has been the focus of increased world concern because of suspicions Tehran may not be telling the truth when it says it is interested in the technology only to generate power.
A resolution passed unanimously on Saturday by the agency's governing board demanded for the first time that Iran freeze all work on uranium enrichment.
Iran remains defiant
Libya - which has been embraced by the international community for renouncing its weapons ambitions - suggested Tehran "co-operate with the IAEA to the full".
But Iran remained defiant.
Intelligence minister Ali Yunesi said his country "may resume (enrichment) any moment".
Delivering the same message at the Vienna conference, Iranian vice-president Reza Aghazadeh said his country would "continue its nuclear activities without interruption".
- AP