Hans Blix, the head of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Committee, is testifying on Capitol Hill this afternoon before a subcommittee on weapons of mass destruction and proliferation. The following analysts will also be testifying as part of the same proceedings and are available for interviews:

Amb. THOMAS GRAHAM Jr.
Graham is a member of the Global Security Institute’s Bipartisan Security Group and was involved in negotiations for every major international arms control and non-proliferation agreement of the past 30 years. He said today: “President John F. Kennedy truly feared that nuclear weapons might well sweep all over the world. In 1962 there were reports that by the late 1970s there would be 25-30 nuclear weapon states in the world with nuclear weapons integrated into their arsenals. If that had happened there would be many more such states today — in September of 2004, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, estimated that more than 40 countries now have the capability to build nuclear weapons. Under such conditions every conflict would carry with it the risk of going nuclear and it would be impossible to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of international terrorist organizations they would be so widespread.

“One of the principal problems with all this has been that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty nuclear weapon states have never really delivered on the disarmament part of this bargain and the United States in recent years appears to have largely abandoned it. The essence of the disarmament commitment was that pending the eventual elimination of nuclear weapon arsenals called for in Article VI of the Treaty, the nuclear weapon states would agree to important interim steps including a treaty prohibiting all nuclear weapon tests, drastic reduction of their nuclear arsenals and a significant diminishment of the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies. None of this has been accomplished over 35 years later.”
More Information

JONATHAN GRANOFF
Granoff is president of the Global Security Institute. He said today: “Nearly every country in the world has accepted the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a necessary legal instrument to address this threat. While simultaneously condemning the spread of nuclear weapons, this treaty sets forth a related obligation to obtain their universal elimination. In 1995, in order to obtain the indefinite extension of the NPT, now with 188 states [as] parties, commitments to nuclear elimination were confirmed and strengthened by the five declared nuclear weapon states — China, United States, France, Russia, and Britain. However, the nuclear weapon states with over 96 percent of the weapons, the United States and Russia, have not fully addressed their fundamental dilemma: they want to keep their nuclear weapons indefinitely and at the same time condemn others who would attempt to acquire them.”
More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167