Ob ogorčenju mednarodne skupnosti zaradi podzemnega jedrskega testa, ki ga je izvedla Severna Koreja, velja spomniti, kaj je v nedavnem pogovoru za nemški Spiegel dejal odhajajoči direktor Mednarodne agencije za jedrsko energijo (IAEA) Mohamed El Baradej.
SPIEGEL: When you took office, you wanted to make the world a safer place; but now the threat seems greater than ever. Nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of the Taliban in Pakistan. North Korea has announced plans to test another nuclear weapon. And, in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasts about being able to close the nuclear cycle. Have you failed?
ElBaradei: No, I don’t think so. We did what we could. We at the IAEA are merely a tool as strong as our member states allow us to be. We cannot make political decisions; nor are we in a position to implement them. We cannot simply march into any country without its consent. It was others who failed.SPIEGEL: Whom do you mean?
ElBaradei: The international community. The world has ignored our warnings. Take the case of Iraq, for example. Even though we had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, they were used as justification for the war — the most dangerous moment of my tenure. Or take Pyongyang. Efforts to engage North Korea in ongoing disarmament talks have failed. And the dialogue with Tehran was tied to preconditions that were unacceptable to the Iranians.SPIEGEL: It was because of assessments like these that you were accused of being naïve, especially by the administration of former US President George W. Bush.
ElBaradei: That’s unfair. In the case of North Korea, for example, we pointed out in 1992 that the country was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And we have consistently pressed the Iranians to respond to unanswered questions about their nuclear program. The world has the IAEA to thank for almost everything it knows about Iran’s nuclear progress.
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ElBaradei: North Korea is obsessed by the fear that the Americans want to topple their regime militarily. As far back as 1992, the foreign minister in Pyongyang gave me a two-hour lecture on how much the Americans had it in for North Korea. Their obsession was only reinforced when George W. Bush placed North Korea on his “Axis of Evil” in 2002. Pyongyang decided then to embark on the road to the bomb.SPIEGEL: Violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is an attempt to blackmail the world. The regime wants economic aid and guarantees to abandon nuclear weapons in return. Should blackmail be rewarded?
ElBaradei: That’s the moral dilemma. To help the starving population, we could very well be supporting a bankrupt, illegitimate regime. Nevertheless, I do believe that food aid should never be tied to political conditions.SPIEGEL: But it is also correct that a regime that we are propping up is selling nuclear know-how on the international black market.
ElBaradei: There is that risk. As far as I’m concerned, the risk of terrorists gaining access to nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to the world. Last year alone, we had 200 cases of illicit trafficking in nuclear and radioactive substances.
