Fears Grow of Wider Spread of Nuclear Weapons

Is America safer under George Bush? Under his inept watch the whole world is becoming more unstable. George Bush is a dangerous reactionary who one day says the war on terror can't be won and the next claims he's going to win it. One day he says the war is because Iraq has weapons of mass destruction then he says Hussein is a brutal dictator and must go and THEN said he went to war to promote democracy in Iraq. All the while North Korea is moving towards becoming a nuclear state as George takes another nap.

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reports of nuclear experiments in South Korean and an unexplained blast in North Korea are stoking fears that other countries may increasingly feel compelled to move toward a "nuclear tipping point."

Few officials and experts predict non-nuclear states will make a mad dash to acquire outright the capability now possessed by the five declared nuclear powers -- the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia -- and three undeclared powers -- Israel, India and Pakistan.

But they are concerned that some governments -- warily watching nuclear activity in the two Koreas and Iran -- may begin to reconsider their own status and start amassing the materials and technologies needed to leap quickly to the nuclear club in the future.

"If the assumption becomes widespread that everybody's doing it, that everyone is experimenting in these areas, then this will tend to erode a taboo against illicit nuclear activities," Robert Einhorn, the top non-proliferation official under former President Bill Clinton, told Reuters.

Einhorn, co-editor of a new book called "The Nuclear Tipping Point," said it is important that questions about programs carried out by the two Koreas and Iran "be resolved in such a way as to rebuild support for staying away from these sensitive technologies."...