The world's largest nuclear powers, particularly the United States, are encouraging other countries to develop atomic weapons, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog claimed today.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mr Mohamed El Baradei said the pace of nuclear disarmament must quicken significantly. "I'm afraid that the alternative is that we'll have scores of countries with nuclear weapons and that's an absolute recipe for self-destruction," he said.
The United States, China, Britain, France and Russia all signed the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They were allowed to keep their atomic arsenals, but agreed to begin negotiations on full disarmament.
The IAEA is charged with verifying members countries' compliance with the NPT through regular inspections of its nearly 190 signatories' nuclear facilities to ensure they are not diverting resources to secret weapons programmes.
Mr El Baradei has attacked US plans to research so-called "mini nukes", smaller nuclear bombs which Washington says it wants to study but not deploy. Mr El Baradei says the plans are sending the wrong signal to other states.
"I think eventually the weapons states have to make good on their commitment under the NPT, which was made 30 years ago, saying that we are going to move to nuclear disarmament," he said.
India and Pakistan have not signed the NPT but have nuclear weapons. Israel has never acknowledged it has a nuclear arsenal, though it is estimated to have up to 200 atomic weapons.
The IAEA discovered Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme after the first Gulf War in 1991. The agency has said that by 1995 it had dismantled the programme.
Earlier this month the IAEA governing board gave Iran until October 31st to prove it has no secret atomic weapons programme, as the United States alleges.
Mr El Baradei said Teheran would miss the deadline unless it began to give him "full cooperation" soon.
AP