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Nations Look to Improve Nuclear Security Pact
Delegates from member states to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material are in Vienna this week to begin work on strengthening the pact’s ability to prevent nuclear terrorism, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 29). “We intend to tear it down, because it’s inadapted, and build it up again, keeping the roof and the walls, and put it up to the current level of the threats posed by nuclear terrorism,” meeting Chairman Alec Baer of Switzerland said yesterday. Amendments planned for the 111-nation treaty would tighten access to plutonium and uranium, boost security during transportation of the materials and limit nuclear reactors’ vulnerability to computer attacks, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 4). The revised document would also call on member states to retrieve diverted plutonium or uranium and to fight future thefts of such materials, the Associated Press reported. Changes to the convention, if approved by experts at the meeting, would still have to be ratified by the member nations. That “will be no cakewalk,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Treaty making is always a long, slow process,” said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency. “This is a milestone on the way there” (Danica Kirka, Associated Press/ABC News, July 4).
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