Bush urges tighter controls to stop nuclear arms

President George W. Bush yesterday called for tougher international safeguards to keep nuclear arms technology from falling into the wrong hands.

"The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attacks with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons," Mr Bush said.

In an election-year speech, Mr Bush proposed what amounts to a limit on the number of nations allowed to produce nuclear fuel in order to prevent the use of civilian nuclear technology to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium for making weapons.

Speaking at the National Defence University, Mr Bush said an emerging black market for nuclear technology was exposed by the arrest of the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Khan admitted last week he had leaked nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran as head of Pakistan's nuclear programme in the 1970s.

"Terrorists and terrorist states are in a race for weapons of mass murder, a race they must lose," Mr Bush said.

Mr Bush has been on the defensive over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq following the US-led invasion last year. His job approval numbers have been dropping as he begins to fight for re-election in November.

Mr Bush's speech gave him a chance to claim the high ground and emphasize his campaign theme of strengthening national security.

Mr Bush called on the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the 40 nations that sell most nuclear technology, to refuse to sell equipment to any country not already equipped to make nuclear fuel.

"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," Mr Bush said.

He also appealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, to form a special committee to focus intensively on safeguards and verification procedures.

"We must ensure that the IAEA has all the tools it needs to fulfil its essential mandate," he said.

He proposed that by next year only states that have signed a protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to permit announced UN nuclear inspections be allowed to import equipment for their civilian nuclear programmes.