Nuclear proliferation developments

I think it’s very important to get onto the record this short and sensible position paper on the threat of Iranian nuclear proliferation, written by Pierre Goldschmidt, the former Deputy Director General of the IAEA and head of its Department of Safeguards from 1999 to June 2005. He argues that the IAEA’s various safeguards regimes around the world have improved considerably in capability in recent– but just at a time when the political will to use them seems to be eroding.
He recommends this:

action by the United Nations (UN) Security Council to adopt a generic binding resolution that would establish three peaceful measures for containing crises when a state is found by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be in non-compliance with its safeguards obligations. These measures are strengthening the IAEA’s authority to conduct the inspections necessary to resolve uncertainties, deterring the noncompliant state from thinking it could withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and then enjoy the benefits of ill-gotten material and equipment, and suspending sensitive fuel-cycle-related activities in the state.

… And just when we thought maybe the government of Iran and North Korea might be the scariest actors in the nuclear-weapons field, along came France’s President Jacques Chirac to threaten the world, according to this piece in friday’s WaPo,

that France was prepared to launch a nuclear strike against any country that sponsors a terrorist attack against French interests. He said his country’s nuclear arsenal had been reconfigured to include the ability to make a tactical strike in retaliation for terrorism.
“The leaders of states who would use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would envision using . . . weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and fitting response on our part,” Chirac said during a visit to a nuclear submarine base in Brittany. “This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind.”
The French president said his country had reduced the number of nuclear warheads on some missiles deployed on France’s four nuclear submarines in order to target specific points rather than risk wide-scale destruction.
“Against a regional power, our choice is not between inaction and destruction,” Chirac said, according to the text of his speech posted on the presidential Web site. “The flexibility and reaction of our strategic forces allow us to respond directly against the centers of power. . . . All of our nuclear forces have been configured in this spirit.”

What a sad and dangerous old man. It makes you wonder whether France– or indeed any of the world’s five “recognized” nuclear-weapons states– should still be trusted by the rest of the world community to be able to “manage” their possession of these globe-threatening weapons responsibly.
By my count at least two of them– France and the US– are currently on the record as stating that they are not prepared to make any declaration of “No first use” of these ghastly weapons of doom.
Onward with the negotiations for “complete and general disarmament” that mandated 35 years agoby Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, I say!
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Addition, Monday morning:
I’ll just make a quick diversion into the topic of the world’s (currently four) non-“recognized” nuclear-weapons states, of which Israel is of course the doyen. Commenter Frank sent me a link to this Jerusalem Post article that describes a panel discussion on nuclear proliferation at Israel’s annual swanky and prestigious “Herzliya conference”. (All the “best and the brightest” of the Israeli security-political establishment tend to turn up there. Two years ago, it was the place where Ariel Sharon first announced his “Disengagement” strategy.)
During the discussion at this year’s conference, Sir Michael Quinlan, the former Permanent Under-Secretary at the British Ministry of Defence,
suggested that if Israel wanted to seriously diminish future nuclear threats, it should be prepared to negotiate the status of its own nuclear program “once it existed in secure and settled borders, accepted by all neighbors in an agreement underwritten by the UN Security Council.”
And the reaction of that august and dignified, mainly Israeli, audience to this sensible and actually very mildly stated suggestion? According to the J. Post, they “hissed.”
What a bunch of childish, self-absorbed little bully boys. Really. And anyone wants to think we should trust them with nuclear weapons, as well?