Critics slam Bush's proposals against nuclear proliferation

US President George W. Bush vowed Wednesday to track down and bring to justice those who traffic in weapons of mass destruction, proposing tougher international sanctions to prevent proliferation. But some critics called his proposals hypocritical and unworkable because they demand sacrifices from developing nations but no concessions from the United States and its nuclear-armed allies.

Bush called for seven specific changes in the international nonproliferation regime, some of which were welcomed as overdue. But implementing them would require consensus by two international agencies the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency – that the Bush administration has harshly criticised in the past.

Most controversial is Bush's proposal to require nations that do not already have the capacity to manufacture nuclear fuel for civilian reactors to purchase their fuel supplies from abroad.

Proponents say it is uneconomical for developing nations to make their own nuclear fuel and unnecessary except for developing a capability to make nuclear bombs.

"The world's leading nuclear exporters should ensure that states have reliable access at reasonable cost to fuel for civilian reactors, so long as those states renounce enrichment and reprocessing,'' Bush said at National Defence University in a speech detailing his proposals. "Enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.''

Critics said Bush's approach would undercut what they saw as a more promising proposal by the IAEA and would be seen as a US attempt to stifle even civilian nuclear development in the Third World while refusing to curtail its own nuclear weapons development. "This will be viewed (abroad) as yet another example of American unilateralism,'' Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani nuclear physicist, said Wednesday in Washington.

"It says: 'You don't have the right to make your own nuclear fuel and we do, because we're responsible and you are not,''' said Hoodbhoy, who also is a critic of what he calls "nuclear nationalism'' in Pakistan. "If you categorise the world in that way, obviously most people are not going to like it.''

Capitol Hill critics said the president's anti-proliferation rhetoric was not matched by what they called his "pro-proliferation'' budget.

"The president's budget includes more than half a billion dollars over the next five years to develop a nuclear bunker buster and other new nuclear weapons but has no significant increases in nonproliferation programmes,'' said Representative Edward Markey.

While the president has vowed to prevent the world's most lethal weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, his actions have "been a lot about the worst people and very little about the worst weapons,'' said Ashton B. Carter, a former assistant secretary of Defence.

An AP report said Malaysia pledged yesterday to share with Washington information from its investigation of a man that Bush has described as a major player in a vast network trafficking nuclear technology.

©Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service