IAEA’s ElBaradei Says NK Nuke Detonation a “Cry for Help”

[onedomino]

ElBaradei is the guy that the US has previously tried to get removed from command of the IAEA. But our demand for his removal faded in the face of EU appeasers, and when no substantial nuke program was found in Iraq. As usual with ElBaradei, it’s all about America. The Pyongyang criminal regime did not threaten everyone in the region by exploding a nuke in defiance of the international community; rather it was merely a radioactive “cry for help.” Quick get me an antiemetic before these cookies go all over the place. Iran is not threatening everyone in the Middle East with its obsession to acquire nuclear weapons; rather it is merely seeking to normalize relations with the United States. Translation: the Mullah Regime in Iran is trying to extort official diplomatic recognition and military security guarantees from America. ElBaradei is sympathetic; delightful. How did ElBaradei’s perception of reality become this twisted? Is this guy actually so naive that he believes his media sound bites?

IAEA Chief Says Direct Talks With Iran, N. Korea Essential

http://worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=283#

WASHINGTON -- Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said North Korea's nuclear test was "a cry for help", and Iran's defiant refusal to halt its nuclear program is aimed at forcing the United States to normalize relations between the two countries.

Speaking at Georgtown University in Washington Monday, the winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize (When Elbaradei was collecting his prize, NK was getting ready to detonate nuclear weapons on his completely ineffective watch. What a sweet prize. Think Elbaradei will retire in Tehran with the Nobel cash? Probably not, Pyongyang has more color in Autumn.) told a gathering of foreign policy specialists and college students that testing a nuclear bomb was "the only trump card" North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il had. The North Koreans "feel isolated and threatened," ElBaradei said. Their message was "we could do more harm unless you come and talk to us."

The Vienna-based U.N. agency monitors nuclear activity throughout the world through on-site inspections, but is "out of the game" in North Korea because it has no inspection teams there.

ElBaradei, who earlier in the day met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice fresh from her tour of Asia, dismissed talk of a nuclear domino effect in Asia. He said Japan and South Korea are not scrambling for their own nuclear deterrent because they still felt protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

However, "if we have another test by North Korea there will be rethinking in this region about that nuclear umbrella," he added.

As for Tehran, ElBaradei said, "From Iran's perspective, the key is to normalize relations with the United States." Iran has defied a call by the U.N. Security Council to halt is uranium enrichment program. On Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Iran's nuclear program had increased tenfold despite Western pressure to stop its nuclear development.

The New York Times and the Washington Post Tuesday quoted ElBaradei as saying in interviews that he believed the Iranians had begun testing new equipment that will double their capacity to enrich uranium. This is a second "cascade" of 164 centrifuges, the technology for converting ordinary uranium into nuclear fuel. But at Georgetown, ElBaradei said that, while Iran may have the knowledge to make weapons-grade uranium, it does not yet have the industrial capacity to produce it in usable quantities.

The Bush administration alleges that the Iranians plan to produce weapons of mass destruction, and Ahmadinejad's anti-Western rhetoric has done little to calm these fears. ElBaradei, who was Hans Blix's deputy at IAEA in the run up to the U.S. attack on Iraq, voiced skepticism that this is Iran's intention. "The jury is still out whether Iran has a nuclear weapons program," he said.

Quoting U.S. director of national intelligence John Negroponte's repeated assertion that Iran could not develop nuclear weapons before 2010 to 2015, ElBaradei said the international community should use the time to engage in negotiations with the Islamic regime in Tehran, and the same goes for the North Koreans. While Bush administration officials continue to rule out direct contact, ElBaradei believes that in both cases, "dealing is indispensable, and we should move away from the idea of dialogue as a reward. . . . We need to talk to all our adversaries."

Sanctions, which Washington would like to impose on both Iran and North Korea, are not the answer, the IAEA director declared: "Sanctions don't work as a penalty. They put hardliners in the driver's seat. Isolation is not a solution."

ElBaradei favors proposals for putting enrichment and reprocessing under international control, thus "delivering the enrichment capability from the problem of deterrence," and what he called "building on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Let's have a look at the regime after 30 years, and let's see how we can strengthen it."

It is also essential that all countries are committed to nuclear disarmament, ElBaradei said. "There's a sense of cynicism that (nuclear) weapon states tell the others not to have nuclear weapons," he added. "The more nuclear weapons capable states we have the more we will be living under the sword of Damocles poised to end civilization," was his apocalyptic warning.

 

[Annie]

I have to agree with you about collusion on the UN's part.

 

[no1tovote4]

Right... A cry for help...

What it told us all was, "Please! Help! We can't get a plutonium bomb to go off!"