By BERNAMA,
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei attends a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in this January 29, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Christian HartmannVIENNA, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief called for a huge cut in U.S. and Russian atom bomb stocks in setting out a world vision he said drew momentum from new U.S. President Barack Obama.
Mohamed ElBaradei, citing new U.S. President Barack Obama’s public commitment to the goal of eliminating nuclear arms, said in a commentary to be published on Wednesday that there was a growing sense this was no longer a “utopian ideal” if major political, diplomatic and technical changes were made.
“I am greatly encouraged that President Obama has made a firm commitment to making the elimination of all nuclear weapons a central tenet of his policies,” ElBaradei said in a commentary to appear in editions of Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.
“What do we need to do as an international community to build on the new momentum?” he asked.
The U.S. and Russia should revive disarmament negotiations with the goal of reducing the number of nuclear warheads worldwide from the current 27,000 to between 500 and 1,000, ElBaradei said.
This should be accompanied by “the long-overdue” entry into force of the 1996 nuclear test ban treaty and early negotiations on a treaty that would verifiably ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons fuel, he added.
He said nuclear fuel production and supply should be run multilaterally and structured to prevent instability arising from states trying to master the process themselves and thereby becoming virtual nuclear arms states.
He urged increased funding and legal powers for his cash-strapped International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to boost its ability to catch nations covertly developing atomic bombs.
He said security of nuclear materials worldwide must be improved, pointing to more than 1,500 cases of illicit trafficking and similar activities involving nuclear or radioactive material.
“This may be just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Finally, the U.N. Security Council must be “drastically reformed so the world can rely on it as the primary body for maintaining international peace and security,” he said in his op-ed piece, emailed in advance to Vienna journalists.
More and more people realise that getting rid of nuclear stockpiles is both possible and necessary and would depend among other things, he said, on “effective multilateralism”, which Obama has called for.
ElBaradei, who with the IAEA won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, clashed with the former Bush administration over what he saw as its unilateralism and refusal to engage foes like Iran. Washington accused him of speaking out beyond his writ. He is to leave office in November when his third term expires.
“No one is suggesting that we will get to zero nuclear weapons overnight,” he wrote, but fears that disarmament could be a destabilising factor should not prevent action.