US strategy 'risks dangerous new arms race'

Adopting differing approaches to tackle the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iraq will undermine long-standing agreements controlling nuclear proliferation, a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned yesterday.

Such "double standards" and "aggressive" American policies which endorse the use of pre-emptive strikes against weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were encouraging the creation of additional categories of nuclear weapons, Tariq Rauf told the conference in London.

"The so-called counterproliferation policy has spawned new missions and roles for nuclear weapons, derailed significant nuclear disarmament gains achieved through the non-proliferation treaty [and] justified demands for development of new types of nuclear weapons," Mr Rauf said at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies.

Addressing a conference sponsored by the Guardian, he said the switch in Washington's strategy, begun under the Clinton administration, was now being deployed as an argument to strengthen missile defences "possibly leading to the weaponisation of space".

He added: "I find it ironic that one of the implications of counterproliferation is to encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons, albeit in hands of existing possessors."

The US, in a recently published document, explicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons against countries which deployed biological or chemical weapons against its troops.

The Americans are developing modified nuclear bombs, such as the B61-11, which could penetrate and destroy underground bunkers where toxins are being produced.

The IAEA is on the front line in North Korea and Iraq. The organisation's inspectors have recently been ordered out of North Korea as the communist regime flouts international demands that it abandon its programme for enriching uranium. In Iraq, IAEA officials are working alongside Unmovic inspectors investigating whether Saddam Hussein's regime retains any nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

"Whereas Iraq is on the verge of being attacked militarily, even though it has resumed unfettered inspections," Mr Rauf said, "[North Korea] has not, and recently kicked out agency inspectors." North Korea's act of defiance was "unprecedented in 40 years" of IAEA inspections.

"The implementation of a varied rather than a uniform approach to dealing with non-compliance or flouting of global non-proliferation norms is [weakening] the authority and integrity of international verification organisations and non-proliferation treaties."

Mr Rauf insisted that sustained inspections were far more effective in getting rid of hidden weapons of mass destruction than military might. "The use of force destroyed less than 25% of Iraq's WMD potential [in the last Gulf war in 1991]," he said.