A study led by former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix called Thursday for outlawing nuclear weapons and reviving global cooperation on disarmament including security guarantees to curb the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
As long as any nuclear, chemical and biological arms remain in any country's arsenal, "there is a high risk that they will one day be used by design or accident," the two-year probe by the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission concluded.
Despite the end of the Cold War the stocks of such weapons remain "extraordinarily high" including 27,000 nuclear weapons, about 12,000 of them still actively deployed, the commission said, making 60 recommendations to free the world from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
At a news conference launching the 227-page report entitled "Weapons of Terror," Blix stressed that "the first line of defense against the spread of nuclear weapons is indeed to make states feel that they don't need them" — which must be rooted in foreign policy not military action.
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