The world is on the brink of an avalanche in the spread of devastating weaponry, a new global non-proliferation group warned yesterday, saying that a nuclear incident would dwarf the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Middle East, particularly Iran, is a potential tipping point, said Gareth Evans, co-chair of the newly formed International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.
Evans, a former Australia foreign minister, said the world had been “sleepwalking” on the issue of atomic weapons for a decade.
“The devastation that could be wreaked by one major nuclear weapons incident alone puts 9-11 and almost everything else [in] to the category of the insignificant,” he said.
Evans was speaking as the commission entered the second and final day of its inaugural meeting in Sydney.
The group, chaired by Evans and Japan’s former top diplomat Yoriko Kawaguchi, is tasked with reinvigorating the global debate on the spread of nuclear weapons and disarmament.
Evans told reporters there were between 13,000 and 16,000 nuclear warheads actively deployed around the world and that it was “really a bit of a miracle” that a nuclear catastrophe had not occurred during the Cold War or afterwards.
“But unless we energize ourselves, unless we reinvigorate a high level political debate which is then accompanied by effective action, we potentially have very alarming consequences staring us in the face,” he said. “We are on the brink of ... an avalanche or a cascade of proliferation unless we are very, very careful indeed and find ways collectively to hold the line.”
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