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ElBaradei urges reform of UN Security Council(Turkish Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Saturday called for the reform and expansion of the U.N. Security Council, saying its engagement in maintaining world peace and security is often "inadequate, selective or after the fact." Mohamed ElBaradei said the Security Council's efforts to control arms have not been systematic or successful in the case of Iraq, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel "When dealing with threats of nuclear proliferation and arms control, the Security Council has too often fallen short. It has made little effort to address nuclear proliferation in context," said ElBaradei, head of the Vienna, Austria-based International Agency for Atomic Energy "It has not responded or followed up effectively to the emergence of new countries with nuclear weapons. It is clearly time for the Security Council to be reformed, expanded and strengthened," he said in a speech at the Institute for Advanced Dental Education in this western German city He also said: "the case of Darfur ... continues to suffer from the inability of the Security Council to muster sufficient peacekeeping troops." ElBaradei noted that in the civil war in Rwanda in 1994, the Security Council was "unable to move much beyond hand-wringing, with the result that 800,000 people lost their lives in the span of a few months." The Security Council voted Friday to keep U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region to monitor an accord ending a 21-year civil war and authorized planning for the expected extension of the U.N. force's operations The Security Council is currently in a deadlock over confronting Iran's nuclear program. The five veto-wielding members have made little progress in crafting a unified message urging Iran to come clean about its suspect nuclear program The gap between Britain, France and the United States on the one side, and China and Russia on the other, on the stance to take toward Iran has shown little sign of closing since council members have started to debate the issue In his speech, ElBaradei also called for prompt ratification of the IAEA additional protocol allowing unannounced inspections by all countries that are party to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty He also urged tighter control for access to nuclear fuel cycle technology and stepped-up global efforts to protect nuclear material |