Having absolutely no reason to believe that the UN is going to put any teeth into atomic inspections, what with the Nobel Committee awarding the toothless IAEA the Nobel Peace Prize, Iran is encouraged to threaten more uncooperation:
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran could stop U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities, its top envoy said Friday, as tens of thousands of Iranians rallied in support of their country’s nuclear program.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told state-run TV that Iran would be entitled to put an end to unfettered inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency unless it changes its resolution on Iran at a November meeting.
Good to know that Iran sees progress being made in its nuclear ambitions.
In what universe does the IAEA deserve an award for failure?
Nihon Hidankyo has been nominated at least three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. The group’s secretary general, Terumi Tanaka, also a nuclear-bomb survivor, noted that the last time, in 2001, the award went to the United Nations and Secretary General Kofi Annan.
“I feel utmost regret that the prize has gone to a UN agency again,” Tanaka told reporters in Tokyo.
“The UN and public organisations are just doing their jobs,” said Tanaka. “I thought the prize would be best suited to an NGO like us who have campaigned against nuclear arms and talked about the bombing experiences over the past 60 years.”
Outrage
Green activists also voiced outrage on Friday, saying the IAEA has helped military nuclear proliferation by encouraging civilian nuclear power.A French group, Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear), said the IAEA should be scrapped because, by “promoting” civilian nuclear plants, it had given countries the means to build atomic bombs.
“The IAEA is hoodwinking the public by claiming that its inspections are preventing access to nuclear weapons by countries that have signed the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Sortir du Nucleaire said in a press statement.
“India, Pakistan and Israel have joined the five ‘great powers’ [the US, Russia, China, France and Britain] in having an unjustifiable right to possessing nuclear weapons and in not meeting their pledges on nuclear disarmament.
“Recent developments [Iran and North Korea] have confirmed the IAEA’s patent failure,” it said.
Good to know, though, that El Baradei and the UN feel vindicated by this award. Because that’s the important thing: How they feel and are perceived.
ElBaradei suggested winning the world’s most prestigious award vindicated his methods and goals – using diplomacy rather than confrontation and defusing tensions in multilateral negotiations that strive for consensus.
He also suggested the conflict with Washington was over, saying Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “wished me well” in a congratulatory phone call.
The Bush administration has bristled at ElBaradei’s positions on the nuclear threat posed by Iran and Iraq and unsuccessfully lobbied to block his appointment to a third and final four-year term this year. The endorsement by the Nobel committee was viewed as a major boost to the 63-year-old Egyptian and his mandate to curb nuclear proliferation.
But wait, it gets worse:
Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 – along with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin – said Friday that he considered the Nobel Committee’s decision a warning to Iran as well as a recognition of what he said was ElBaradei’s worthy, but incomplete, efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
“The message [of awarding the Nobel Prize to the IAEA and ElBaradei] is to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, because if the irresponsible people in the world – and there are quite a few of these – get nuclear weapons, it will be very difficult to exist in the world,” Peres told Israel Radio.
I’m going to stop reading about this in the news for a while. My blood pressure can’t take it.