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(IPS) news feature

Terrorist use of nuclear material is likely unless nations take action to reduce the threat of nuclear conflict and rid the world of nuclear weapons, disarmament and medical experts said recently.

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the Centre for Defence Information, and other US non-governmental groups praised Presidents George W Bush and Vladimir Putin for the recent pledge to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads.

Bush said the United States would unilaterally reduce its nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads. Putin indicated he would cut Russia's arsenal to about 1,500. Both countries have more than 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads.

But even with these new cuts, groups said nuclear weapons and materials would remain a threat and could end up in the hands of terrorists.

''Bush and Putin need to go much further,'' said Ira Helfand, a doctor with Physicians for Social Responsibility. ''This round of arms cuts must be the first of many moves toward the ultimate goal of total abolition of nuclear weapons.''

Groups urged both governments to ban the manufacture, transfer, and sale of all fissile materials; immediately take their missiles off high alert status; fund programmes to destroy or render useless all known stocks of nuclear materials; and abandon plans to develop and deploy a US National Missile Defence (NMD) shield.

Radical steps

''Unless radical steps are taken immediately, it will not be a question of whether terrorists can acquire or build a nuclear device, but when,'' said Mary-Wynne Ashford, co-president of IPPNW.

Groups also called for the development of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty that would parallel the Biological Weapons Convention and ban the testing, stockpiling, manufacture, and use of nuclear weapons.

''Unless we abolish nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear annihilation will always loom over us,'' said Jonathan Schell, a prominent author on nuclear issues.

Groups also rallied for an increase in funding for joint Russian-US programmes already under way to help secure Russia's aging and under-funded nuclear weapons storage facilities.

''Ironically, just prior to the Sept11 attacks, the Bush administration proposed to cut US$100 million from the Russian-American Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme, which seeks to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union,'' said John Pastore, a physician who served with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Bruce Blair, president of the Centre for Defence Information, said there is considerable concern that Osama bin Laden or members of his al-Qaeda terrorist network might be able to obtain nuclear material through insiders at nuclear facilities in Pakistan and the former Soviet Union. Officials in those countries have denied any such possibility.

The International Atomic Energy Agency recently concluded that al-Qaeda is ''actively seeking'' an atomic bomb and in a recent videotaped message, bin Laden stated that acquiring nuclear weapons is a ''religious duty.''

Blair, a former nuclear missile launch control officer, said there is no credible evidence that bin Laden has acquired a nuclear bomb. But, he added, ''it is very plausible that he has obtained nuclear waste.''

Such waste, he said, could be used to build a ''dirty bomb'', an explosive device that disperses nuclear radiation. Blair said that the amount of radioactive material and the amount of explosive for such bombs could vary greatly.

The arrest and questioning by authorities in Pakistan of three leading scientists in that country, two of them veterans of its nuclear weapons programme, with suspected sympathies for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, heightened concerns about the transfer of nuclear knowledge or materials to terrorists.

''Pakistan's nuclear weapons are known to lack many of the technical safeguards needed to prevent unauthorised detonation,'' IPPNW said in a report.

Expand assistance

The US administration has also signalled it wanted to expand assistance to help Russia improve security for its nuclear material and to dismantle nuclear warheads.

Disarmament advocates warned, however, that Bush's push to develop and deploy NMD would further undermine international security by stimulating a new nuclear arms race.

Missile defence, said Helfand, creates the illusion that the United States is protected against terrorism. However, it ''does not defend the United States against the things terrorists are likely to do,'' such as using car bombs or, as in the Sept 11 attacks, using aeroplanes as weapons.

The tens of billions of dollars to be spent on missile defence and currently spent on maintaining the large nuclear arsenal, added Blair, could be more effectively used to strengthen domestic security.

While concerns over nuclear terrorism have increased since the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, the call to rid the world of nuclear weapons is hardly novel.

In 1998, former US President Jimmy Carter and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev topped a list of more than 100 ex-heads of state calling for immediate steps to reduce the threat of nuclear conflict and eventually rid the world of nuclear weapons.

A similar call was made in 1996 by 50 generals and admirals from around the world.

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