Former US Senator Expresses Concern Over Growing Risk of Nuclear Attack
Pastor Dale Morgan
Former US Senator Expresses Concern Over Growing Risk of Nuclear Attack*
By Meredith Buel
Washington
15 April 2007
Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn has dedicated much of his career to
reducing global threats from weapons of mass destruction. He is
currently the co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private
group working to decrease such threats worldwide. In an interview with
VOA, Nunn expressed concern that the risk of such an attack is growing,
as we hear in this report from correspondent Meredith Buel in Washington.
More than 15 years ago, the U.S. Congress approved the Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program. The legislation provides funding to the former
Soviet states to dismantle their nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
In the years since the program began, thousands of nuclear warheads have
been dismantled, and hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles
have been destroyed.
Former Senator Sam Nunn co-sponsored the legislation creating the
program, and now co-chairs the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an
organization working to reduce the danger of weapons of mass destruction.
Despite those efforts, Nunn says, the risk of such weapons being used
today is growing, not receding.
He says more than 40 countries have enough highly enriched uranium to
make a nuclear bomb.
The former senator says the rise of global terrorism and the
availability of technology increase the likelihood of a nuclear attack.
"The ability now to discover or find out how to make a nuclear weapon
and the knowledge that is proliferated to lots of individuals around the
globe, that is a totally different thing than we faced 20-years ago," he
said. "You combine all of that, and you have got a very dangerous
situation."
Nunn says countries such as Iran and North Korea are, as he puts it,
pushing international will to the brink by developing nuclear
technology, and in the case of North Korea, producing nuclear weapons.
He says there are stockpiles of loosely guarded nuclear weapons-grade
material scattered around the world, offering tempting targets for theft
or sale.
"So the first step is to secure the material everywhere it is, wherever
it is on the face of the earth," he said. "That takes cooperation of
lots of different countries. As I view it, we are in a race between
cooperation and catastrophe, and, right now, the outcome is unclear."
Nunn says the potential for conflict among the major powers, most
notably between the United States and Russia, has dramatically declined.
However, he says, nations with and without nuclear arms must embrace the
vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
"The United States is not going to give up our nuclear weapons without
other countries giving them up, and that is the same for everybody that
has nuclear weapons," said Nunn.
"But, if all of our countries that have nuclear weapons insist we are
going to retain them forever, we are going to have a lot more company in
that circle. That is a world I do not want to leave to my children and
grandchildren," he continued.
Nunn says nations must redouble efforts to resolve regional conflicts,
if the world is to reduce the incentive for acquiring nuclear weapons in
places such as the Middle East, southwest Asia and the Korean peninsula.
He says potential regional confrontations create tensions that shape the
security outlook for the entire world.