Agence France-Presse,
Security experts from around the world meeting here Monday warned of the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack, and called for renewed efforts to crack down on black market sales of nuclear and radioactive material.
“Nuclear terrorism is a global threat that requires a global response,” said FBI director Robert Mueller, as he inaugurated an international conference on nuclear terrorism, a component of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT).
He described nuclear terrorism as “one of the most dangerous and deadly threats” that nations around the world face.
President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the initiative in July 2006 at the G8 summit of industrialized nations meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
At the time the two leaders urged nations around the world to work to fight the threat of nuclear terrorism by working to better safeguard nuclear material and radioactive substances.
Officials from some 30 nations that signed on to the initiative were present at the Miami conference.
The mechanics of assembling a nuclear explosive is relatively easy, experts said. Much more difficult is gaining access to highly enriched uranium or plutonium necessary for the bomb.
“The laws of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere, will provide material to the highest bidder,” Mueller said.
Vladimir Bulavin, the deputy director of Russia's Federal Security Bureau, said that the threat of nuclear terrorism “is still the main threat of every country.”
Russia has taken steps to control the threat through close “accounting and control of nuclear material,” Bulavin said.
Mueller called for cracking down on the international nuclear technology black market, warning that the likes of Al-Qaeda network leader Osama bin Laden — responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States — are actively seeking nuclear material.
Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan — father of his country's nuclear program who in 2004 confessed to providing nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea — “is one of many to prove that there is a sellers' market” of nuclear technology.
“This is not about catching the crook after the crime is committed,” said Mueller's boss, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was also at the event.
“Rather, it is about prevention — and keeping weapons and the building blocks for them, accounted for, secure, outside of illicit markets, and away from terrorists.”
Addressing the foreign law enforcement officials in the audience he said: “Communication, sharing and coordination … are the essence of what will ultimately make our network stronger than the terrorist network.”
The meeting, lasting nearly a week, will include conferences on smuggling trends and detection of nuclear material around the world, border security, improvised nuclear devices and “dirty bombs,” bombs that spread radiation.
Experts said there is a strong possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States following the September 11 attacks.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a publication that operates the “Doomsday Clock” to signal the chances of a nuclear catastrophe, currently has the clock set at five minutes to midnight.
Scientists at the bulletin last year moved the hand forward from seven minutes to midnight, saying that the likelihood is high because of terrorists on suicide missions looking for spectacular strikes.
