Mohamed ElBaradei Weapons Quotations

Iran's goal is not to become another North Korea - a nuclear weapons possessor but a pariah in the international community - but rather Brazil or Japan, a technological powerhouse with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons if the political winds were to shift, while remaining a nonnuclear weapons state.

Iran has the technology to produce the highly enriched uranium, which is not automatically meaning nuclear weapon.

We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons.

I feel relieved that we discovered that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.

I worry about a democracy having nuclear weapons as much as a dictatorship having nuclear weapons.

Nobody wants any country to have nuclear weapons.

We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power; you are buying insurance against attack.

Nuclear proliferation is on the rise. Equipment, material and training were once largely inaccessible. Today, however, there is a sophisticated worldwide network that can deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons.

It would be, in fact, very ominous if Iraq were to be able to get weapon-usable material, hydro-plutonium or highly enriched uranium from abroad.

As long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.

Barring exceptional circumstances and provided there is the sustained, proactive cooperation by Iraq, we should be able in the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program.

We have not seen diversion of nuclear material for weapons purposes, but the picture is still hazy and not very clear.

We should remain humbled by what we have learned from the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We cannot allow sixty years to soften our memories of how devastating such weapons are.

the slow progress of the nuclear-weapons states toward making good on their commitments to move toward nuclear disarmament -- with 27,000 warheads still in existence -- is creating an environment of cynicism among the non-nuclear weapons states.

We need to bite the bullet and see how we can move beyond nuclear weapons deterrence, and I think that we have not done that yet.

But luckily, I think, we are here when they have not developed a full-fledged capability and luckily also they have announced that they are ready to eliminate all programs relevant to weapons of mass destruction, which I think is a very good step in the right direction.

In areas where disputes have not been solved for decades like the Middle East, South Asia and the Korean peninsula, we see attempts to acquire nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction to overcome the feeling of insecurity or for wider influence, regrettably the steps of the (other) nuclear powers.

Iraq is committed to declare all it possesses regarding weapons of mass destruction, if it still has any of them ... and will also declare all of its activities in the chemical, biological and nuclear fields, even those of civilian use,

an opportunity to cough up whatever they have left of weapons of mass destruction.

The Iraqi authorities are aware that they don't have much wiggle room, that the international community is united in its resolve that Iraq must prove that it has no weapons of mass destruction.

They need to go out of their way to prove through whatever possible means that they have no weapons of mass destruction.