Washington, Mar 18: UN's nuclear watchdog IAEA and US president George W Bush have agreed it was time to "change many of the rules" in order to "strengthen the fight against nuclear proliferation", the watchdog's chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said.
Elbaradei told reporters on Wednesday after meeting Bush at the White House that they had a "good overview of what needs to be done in the area of strengthening the non-proliferation regime". "This is a different ballgame and we need to change many of the rules," ElBaradei said. He said they had "agreed on the need to revisit the whole export control regime. As a result of AQ Khan associates and the lesson we have learned from that."
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, confessed in January to running an international black market ring that shared sensitive nuclear technology with Iran, Libya and North Korea for more than a decade.
ElBaradei said he and Bush had also discussed clean-up measures.
He said they "focused particularly on nuclear material, highly enriched uranium and plutonium. To develop a good program to control these materials and hopefully enliminate it and replace it by low level enrichment that does not pose a serious threat," he said.
Bureau Report
