Posted on 10/09/2005 8:41:17 AM PDT by Crackingham
Green activists voiced outrage after the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, saying the IAEA had 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 United States, Russia, China, France, Britain) in having an unjustifiable right to possessing nuclear weapons and in not meeting their pledges on nuclear disarmament. “Recent developments (Iran, North Korea etc.) have confirmed the IAEA’s patent failure,” it said.
In Amsterdam, Greenpeace International spokesman Mike Townsley acknowledged that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had been “a voice of sanity” in his advocacy of a nuclear-free Middle East. But, Townsley told AFP, ElBaradei was trapped by the IAEA’s “contradictory role, as nuclear policeman and nuclear salesman.”
The agency’s dual function was to promote civilian nuclear energy and at the same try to prevent countries from using the self-same technology to make nuclear bombs, he said. The Nobel Committee said the IAEA’s work was “of incalculable importance” at a time when disarmament efforts “appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role.”
George Monbiot, a radical author and commentator with the British daily The Guardian, said the 2005 prize to the IAEA and its boss “was a reward for failure in an age of rampant proliferation.”
This was clearly an anti-American, anti-Bush statement by the Nobel Foundation. Remember these were the same guys who "leaked" the missing bomb fiction on the eve of the election.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.