UNITED NATIONS: Sixty years after Hiroshima, Mohamed ElBaradei has big ideas for changing the way the world handles the atom. The sweeping overhaul he envisions — bringing uranium and plutonium technology under tougher, possibly international control — would mean a “sea change” in the nuclear realm. But it’s necessary, the UN nuclear chief says, “because we are facing a threat.”

ElBaradei spoke with The Associated Press on Friday at the end of a week in which he canvassed support for his ideas at a conference here of more than 180 nations reviewing the status of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. He said he expects to win global support to begin planning such changes, in part because of the current alarm over Iran’s ability to establish a uranium-enrichment capability.

“Everybody understands that if we continue in that fashion, in the next 10, 20 years we’ll have 20, 30 countries that I would call virtual nuclear-weapons states, meaning countries that could move within months into converting their civilian capacity or capability into a weapons programme,” said ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran’s enrichment programme, using centrifuges that can produce uranium fuel for either nuclear power plants or nuclear bombs, is a major issue at the treaty review.

Tehran says the programme is meant only for peaceful purposes of civilian energy; Washington claims it is a cover for eventual bomb-building. Under the 1970 non-proliferation treaty, states like Iran without nuclear weapons renounce them forever in exchange for a commitment by nuclear-weapons states to move toward disarmament. Access to peaceful technology is guaranteed under the treaty, but ElBaradei said the spread of such capabilities has become a “serious problem.”

The tighter controls he envisions “would be a real sea change in the way we have been managing nuclear energy,” the IAEA chief said.

He has asked the current treaty conference to consider several possible approaches suggested by an IAEA expert group in February. They range from simply tightening controls on current commercial sales of dual-use equipment, to turning all enrichment and plutonium reprocessing operations — another potential bomb-making system — over to multilateral control, by region or continent.

ElBaradei himself has proposed a five-year moratorium on new nuclear fuel facilities anywhere while the world’s nations negotiate over new controls. Addressing the UN conference on Monday, he offered to investigate ways to guarantee international supplies of fuel for those who need them.

In consultations since then with treaty nations, he has found a “mixed reaction” to the moratorium idea, ElBaradei said, since Iran is not the only country with plans for new uranium-enrichment or plutonium-reprocessing facilities. But he said he hopes the IAEA will get formal approval from the treaty conference or his agency’s member nations to explore legal, institutional, financial and other aspects of possible new controls. “I’m pretty confident that I will be asked by either the non-proliferation treaty parties or our IAEA member states to continue that work,” he said.

The Americans demand that Iran dismantle its enrichment equipment. President Bush has proposed simply banning sales of enrichment and reprocessing technology to nations other than the dozen or so who already have it, and ensuring that any who want fuel can buy it “at reasonable cost.”

ElBaradei said that idea “has merit” but also has two problems. He said one is that many countries already can develop the sensitive technology on their own, and the other is that it raises questions of “different standards” — that is, double standards for those allowed to have fuel technology and those denied it.—Dawn/IPS News Service