More `Near-nuclear' States May Loom

More `Near-nuclear' States May Loom - Associated Press

At a recent meeting of members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Ukrainian chairman sought to strike an upbeat note about the future, highlighting the "public and political momentum towards a world free of nuclear weapons." Volodyrmyr Yelchenko was right: Statesmen as diverse as Henry Kissinger and Mikhail Gorbachev have taken up the cause of "nuclear abolition." And this year's US presidential contenders both support a more favorable American stance toward arms control. But other forces are pushing back. Renewed interest in nuclear energy, to stem global warming, is expected to give more states the technological building blocks for a bomb. The continuing revelations about the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan's network, which reportedly had blueprints for a compact weapon, show that globalized nuclear smuggling is growing more sophisticated and dangerous.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/28/AR2008062801237.html