Lessons From Libya

By Andrew Purvis; Douglas Waller

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's apparent decision to come clean on his secret nuclear-weapons program could prove to be a major achievement in the world's bid to rein in rogue nuclear nations. But it has also shown how far there still is to go. Since 1980, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have visited Libya, a signatory of the 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty, and routinely reported that they found no evidence of a nuclear-weapons program, although they did stress that they could not guarantee their information was complete. Last week IAEA inspectors visited nine nuclear sites in Libya, four of which the agency hadn't even known existed until then--and were surprised to find ongoing efforts to build the centrifuge technology required to produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

The IAEA believes that Libya was years away from succeeding. But the agency's critics cite the revelations as more proof that the U.N. body "does a terrible job of inspecting nations that are determined to cheat," contends Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute. IAEA officials counter that without good intelligence from the U.S. and other nations or the right to conduct spot inspections, they cannot verify a country's claims of compliance. Libya, they say, is proof that arms-control systems need to be strengthened. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, says the episode should trigger soul searching in countries building nuclear technology and urges a ban on uranium enrichment, except under international supervision.

Some Bush Administration officials would like U.S. and British inspectors, not the U.N., to oversee the dismantling of Libya's program. But unilateral inspections aren't likely to be acceptable, ElBaradei tells TIME. "Inspectors working for a single country have a problem of credibility," he observes. Yet some progress is being made in dealing with another rogue nuclear regime. This week a group of private citizens from the U.S. are scheduled to visit North Korea to examine its Yongbyon nuclear complex--the first such visit since U.N. inspectors were expelled a year ago.

--By Andrew Purvis and Douglas Waller