New York Times  [Printer-friendly version]
June 1, 2006

BLIX SAYS U.S. IMPEDES EFFORTS TO CURB A-ARMS

By Warren Hoge

UNITED NATIONS, June 1 -- Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations
weapons inspector, said today that American unwillingness to cooperate
in international arms agreements was undermining the effectiveness of
efforts to curb nuclear weapons.

Saying it was essential that Washington act to end the stagnation of
arms limitation, Mr. Blix said: "If it takes the lead, the world is
likely to follow. If it does not take the lead, there could be more
nuclear tests and new nuclear arms races."

Mr. Blix, who left his arms inspection post in 2003 shortly after the
invasion of Iraq, made his comments in the introduction to a 225-page
report by a Swedish-financed international commission, delivered today
to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan.

The panel, with Mr. Blix as chairman and members from more than a
dozen countries, listed 60 recommendations for nuclear disarmament.

It concluded that treaty-based disarmament was being set back by "an
increased U.S. skepticism regarding the effectiveness of international
institutions and instruments, coupled with a drive for freedom of
action to maintain an absolute global superiority in weaponry and
means of their delivery."

Mr. Blix, 77, a Swedish constitutional lawyer and the director general
of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997, was
disparaged by the Bush administration for failing to turn up weapons
of mass destruction during the three years he headed up the United
Nations inspection team in Iraq.

The report drew a direct link between the rise of individual action
and the decline of cooperation. "Over the past decade, there has been
a serious and dangerous loss of momentum and direction in disarmament
and non-proliferation efforts," it said. "Treaty-making and
implementation have stalled, and, as a new wave of proliferation has
threatened, unilateral enforcement action has been increasingly
advocated."

The commission urged all countries to sign and ratify the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and called on nuclear states to reduce
their arsenals and stop producing plutonium and highly enriched
uranium for more nuclear weapons.

The United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
and in 2001 it withdrew from the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty.

"While the reaction of most states to the treaty violations was to
strengthen and develop the existing treaties and institutions," Mr.
Blix said, "the U.S., the sole superpower, has looked more to its own
military power for remedies."

One result, he said, was that "the nuclear weapons states no longer
seem to take their commitment to nuclear disarmament seriously."

The commission said there were 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world,
with 12,000 of them deployed -- numbers it labeled "extraordinarily and
alarmingly high."

Mr. Blix said he feared the number of nuclear weapons would rise
because of efforts to develop more sophisticated new weapons and place
them in space. He said he also feared an American-proposed missile
shield would bring about countermeasures by Russia and China.

The commission said nuclear weapons should ultimately be banned the
way biological and chemical weapons were. "Weapons of mass destruction
cannot be uninvented," the report said. "But they can be outlawed, as
biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made
unthinkable."

It identified as "two loud wake-up calls" the breakdown of the United
Nations conference a year ago on the future of the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and the failure of last fall's United Nations
summit meeting of heads of state to include a mention of weapons of
mass destruction -- a lapse that Mr. Annan described at the time as a
"disgrace."

The commission said nuclear weapons ought to be taken off high-alert
status because of the risk of launching by error and called on
countries to pledge no first use, including in cases considered
preemptive or preventative.

It also called for declaring certain regions to be free of
unconventional weapons -- "particularly and most urgently in the Middle
East."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company