SYDNEY, Australia - The world has not paid enough attention to the spread of nuclear weapons since the Cold War and could face devastation dwarfing the 9/11 attacks if the threat is not quickly curbed, the co-chair of a nuclear commission said Tuesday.
Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said that while nuclear proliferation took a back seat to climate change and financial crises, countries such as India and Pakistan tested nuclear missiles, leaving the world vulnerable to an "avalanche" of new weapons.
"The last decade or so, the international community has been sleepwalking when it comes to this potentially catastrophic problem," Evans said during a break from the first meeting of the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament.
"The scale of the havoc and the devastation that can be wreaked by one major nuclear weapons incident alone puts 9/11 -- almost everything else -- into the category of the insignificant," said Evans, who is co-chair of the commission.
The new commission, a joint venture by Australia and Japan that brings together officials from major nuclear powers and other interested countries, aims to influence a review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that is due in 2010. The treaty dates back to 1968 but has not been signed by nuclear powers India, Pakistan and Israel.
Evans and his co-chair, Japan's former Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, offered no details from the meeting, saying any conclusions or recommendations would not be ready for some time. The commission includes former diplomats and senior officials from 15 countries, and plans to meet six more times over the next two years.
The next gathering is scheduled for early 2009 in Washington following the U.S. presidential elections. The commission hopes to discuss with the new U.S. administration the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The treaty can't come into effect until all participants sign - and the United States is among the holdouts.
Thirty-five of the 44 states that participated in a 1996 disarmament conference and that possessed nuclear power or research reactorsat the time have ratified the treaty.
Evans has met with the camps of Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama and said he's confident both would bring positive changes to the issue of nuclear proliferation, including possible early ratification of the treaty. But Obama's approach, Evans said, was likely to carry greater weight internationally.
"Unquestionably, the agenda in which the Obama people are interested is broader, more substantive and likely to make a bigger international impact than the relatively narrow focus -- at least at this stage -- of the McCain administration," Evans said.
