US President George W. Bush proposed new steps to halt illicit weapons trafficking, warning that black-market dealings by the architect of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program had exposed holes in global enforcement efforts.
"Every civilized nation has a stake in preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction," Bush said Wednesday.
He promised that the steps he outlined would prevent such weapons from being used, and he painted a grim portrait of the consequences of failing to pursue such steps.
Bush also gave a boost to his intelligence agencies, under fire over miscalculations in Iraq, citing their work in exposing the underground Pakistani network that supplied nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who was the father of that country's nuclear weapons program, last week admitted being the mastermind of the scheme.
Khan was pardoned by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.
"Breaking this network is one major success in a broad-based effort to stop the spread of terrible weapons," Bush said.
Yet Bush skated past the fact that the intelligence successes came after Iran, North Korea and Libya had already obtained the weapons technology from Khan's network.
The president hailed Libya's agreement to abandon illicit weapons efforts; Iran and North Korea have not said they plan to follow suit.
Bush for the first time publicly accused Khan's network of supplying North Korea with the centrifuge technology that is needed to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The administration previously had said it believed Khan's network was supplying weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, but had not specified what.
The administration and North Korea are in a dispute over whether the North Koreans are trying to develop nuclear weapons using highly enriched uranium -- a key dispute as the two nations head into talks later this month with four other countries, including China. Bush offered doomsday predictions on what would happen if terrorists come to possess weapons of mass destruction.
Some of his language was reminiscent of his warnings a year ago, when he said Iraq had such banned weapons.
"The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons," Bush said.
He offered a seven-point plan to combat the spread of such weapons. He proposed expanding a US-led international effort to halt commerce in weapons moving by land, sea or air; tightening laws and international controls on weapons proliferation; increasing government spending worldwide on programs aimed at securing vulnerable nuclear arsenals in Russia and other former Soviet-bloc nations; banning new countries from having the ability to enrich or process nuclear material, a step he said would deprive additional nations of being able to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs; prohibiting nations that do not back the Additional Protocol -- which requires states to declare a broad range of nuclear activities and facilities, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect those facilities -- from importing equipment for their civilian nuclear programs; creating a special panel of the IAEA to buttress its ability to monitor countries' compliance; and barring countries under investigation for violating nuclear nonproliferation obligations from serving on the board of governors of the IAEA.
Bush is making national security and the fight against terrorism the centerpiece of his re-election campaign. In the speech, he sought to rally Americans behind him in the cause, reminding listeners that the shadow of attack remains.
He chose a friendly setting for the speech -- National Defense University in Washington, where members of his state and defense departments, along with university students and staff, think-tank employees and military veterans applauded fervently throughout his remarks.
Bush walked a delicate political tightrope, using his first public accusations of Khan to illustrate the dangers of rogue arms sales, while avoiding criticizing Pakistan's government.
Musharraf's government claims it knew nothing of Khan's network, though the Pakistani military controlled Pakistan's nuclear program.
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