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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ed Huang who wrote (19006)	3/11/2003 10:36:25 AM
From: Ed Huang	Respond to of 25898

U.N.: Nuclear Security Too Poor to Stop Dirty Bombs Tue March 11, 2003 07:12 AM ET By Louis Charbonneau VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday stricter security measures were urgently needed to keep radioactive material out of the hands of terrorists, who could use it to wreak havoc with "dirty bombs." Opening an international conference on dirty bombs, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei said the September 11, 2001 attacks had shown terrorists were not afraid to handle deadly radioactive material to construct such a bomb. "Given the apparent readiness of terrorists to disregard their own safety, the personal danger from handling powerful radioactive sources can no longer be seen as an effective deterrent," he said. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told the conference that terrorists were prepared to "employ technology never intended for use as weapons, to murder thousands of innocent and unsuspecting people in the most shocking and ruthless way." Dirty bombs -- the popular term for radiological dispersion devices -- are made by attaching radioactive material to a conventional explosive to spread it over a wide area. Britain said in January it had evidence that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network tried to develop a dirty bomb in the late 1990s. But some counter-terrorism experts and even officials within the IAEA argue that such bombs are generally of little interest to groups like al Qaeda as they are less effective than more easily accessible weapons. But ElBaradei said that while a dirty bomb might not necessarily kill its victims, the most severe impact would be "panic and social disruption associated with exposure to radiation, the very purpose of an act of terror." There have been more than 280 confirmed cases of criminal trafficking of radioactive material, but "the actual number of cases may be significantly larger than the number reported to the agency," he said. While there has yet to be a dirty bomb attack, ElBaradei said recent reports about terrorist plans to use dirty bombs worth were taking seriously and that states should spent time and money to beef up nuclear security. "While a number of countries are stepping up relevant security measures, many others lack the resources...to effectively control radioactive sources." ElBaradei said the problem of radioactive material disappearing from regulator's records was especially acute in the countries of the former Soviet Union, where the IAEA has cooperated with Russia and the United States in operations to recover deadly radioactive material. TAKING ACTION Abraham said the IAEA had put together a program to help states take the legal, regulatory and technical steps needed to protect radioactive materials. Highly radioactive materials have a wide variety of uses in medicine, agriculture and industry -- to treat cancer, keep stored grain from rotting and analyze pipes for fissures. Experts from the U.N. and other organizations have warned that security has been so lax at some hospitals and other facilities -- even in the U.S. and western Europe -- that radioactive materials could easily be pilfered. While nuclear material that can be used in full-scale nuclear weapons has long been recognized as dangerous, standard radioactive material has not been subject to the same kind of security. reuters.com