SA to chair nuclear suppliers body
Edwin Tshivhidzo
16 October 2006South Africa has been elected chair of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for 2007-08.
The 45-country body unanimously confirmed the election at its consultative meeting in Vienna, Austria last Thursday.
The group's next annual plenary meeting will consequently be held in South Africa in 2007.
The group, currently chaired by Brazil, was established in 1975 to ensure that nuclear items meant for peaceful purposes are not diverted to unsafe or unguarded activities.
Comprising 45 countries considered to be suppliers of nuclear items, the body inevitably deals with dual-use nuclear items that can be used for either peaceful or non-peaceful purposes.
South Africa "welcomes the confidence placed in it by the full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group as recognition of the country's non-proliferation and disarmament credentials," the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday.
South Africa terminated its nuclear weapons programme and acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons on 10 July 1991. Shortly afterwards, the country concluded a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
For this reason, South Africa remains opposed to any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and continues to call for the disbanding of nuclear weapons.
N Korea: SA would comply with sanctions
Last week, South Africa said it would comply if the United Sanctions were to impose sanctions against North Korea for testing a nuclear device against the wishes of the international community.
"If North Korea has tested a weapon it will become the ninth nuclear power in the world, and we really want all nuclear weapons to be removed from the arsenal of all nine nuclear-weapon countries," South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said.
Pahad added, however, that there remained a difference of opinion internationally as to whether North Korea had indeed tested a nuclear weapon last Monday.
While many news reports said it was a full-fledged nuclear event, some suggested the material exploded in North Korea could have been conventional TNT explosives, while others put the explosion down to a failed nuclear test.
Source: BuaNews
