SYDNEY, Nov 8 (AFP) - Nuclear terrorism is a genuine threat and past assumptions about how to control the spread of nuclear materials need to be radically overhauled, the head of the UN's atomic energy agency warned Monday.
"The threat of nuclear terrorism is real and current," Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a keynote speech at the start of a two-day conference in Sydney.
The agency's work on suspected nuclear weapons programs in Libya and Iran had revealed an extensive black market for radioactive materials, with around 630 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive materials since 1993, he said.
This illicit market "clearly thrived on demand", he said.
"The relative ease with which a multinational illicit network could be set up and operated demonstrates clearly the inadequacy of the present export control system," he said.
More than two dozen companies and individuals were involved and in most cases the market carried on without the knowledge of their governments.
"Clearly it is time to change our assumptions regarding the inaccessibility of nuclear technology," he said.
"In a modern society characterised by electronic information exchange, interlinked financial systems and global trade, the control of access to nuclear weapons technology has grown increasingly difficult.
"The technical barriers to mastering the essential steps of uranium enrichment - and to designing weapons - have eroded over time.
"Much of the hardware in question is 'dual use' and the sheer diversity of technology has made it much more difficult to control or even track procurement and sales."
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the conference the threat of nuclear proliferation by rogue states or terrorist acts involving nuclear facilities and nuclear and radioactive materials were global problems.
Downer said condidering the international outcry that would result from any radiological attack, preventative measures should get greater consideration.
"There would be a sense of global pandemonium. Yet how much focus is there at the moment," he said.
11/08/2004 03:18 GMT - AFP