Bush Flirts with Nuclear Disaster, Kennedy SaysWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has turned back years of U.S. efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons and has made the world a more dangerous place, one of the Senate's leading liberals said on Tuesday.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, called the last four years of nuclear policy under Bush "a constant flirtation with nuclear disaster" that has rejected a "half century of success" in nuclear deterrence and steps toward disarmament. In a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kennedy faulted the Republican president for "encouraging new arms races, neglecting arms control and ignoring the truly threatening nuclear weapons developments in North Korea and Iran and the loose materials that could be readily available to terrorists." Kennedy said the administration's focus on Iraq -- where no weapons of mass destruction have been found -- and its unwillingness to work with other countries "has been a serious setback for our nonproliferation policy, and may very well have made al Qaeda terrorists even more determined to find a way to make a nuclear attack on America." The administration did little to stop Pakistani scientists from selling nuclear secrets, Kennedy said, sending a message to the world that "if you're a friend, you will not be punished for trading in nuclear arms. If you're Iraq, we will punish you, whether you really have nuclear arms or not." Kennedy also said Bush is undermining efforts to control weapons by pursuing new categories of weapons -- low-yield "mini-nukes" and earth-penetrating "bunker-busters."
"We are trying to persuade the world to 'do as we say, not as we do,' and few countries will oblige," he said. "There is little doubt that these new categories of weapons would spark a new arms race." © Copyright 2004 Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters or its third-party content providers. Any copying, republication, or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
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