Nuke threat still big global risk: Evans

The nuclear threat is up there with the global financial crisis and climate change
as one of the big three risks to the international community, former foreign
minister Gareth Evans says.
But Mr Evans fears world leaders who never lived through the Cold War may think the
world is immune to the threat.
"There has been so much complacency in so many places around the world that this is
a Cold War problem," he told reporters.
"The sense of urgency is not there.
"In terms of the scale of the risks you're talking about this is ... right up there
with the risks associated with the meltdown economically and the risks associated
with climate change.
"This is one of the big three issues."
The co-chair of the federal government-initiated International Commission on Nuclear
Non-Proliferation and Disarmament was in Canberra on Thursday as the first witness
before a parliamentary inquiry into disarmament and non-proliferation.
Mr Evans, however, is buoyed by the response so far from the US administration.
Earlier this month, Mr Evans and other members of the commission met US
Vice-President Joe Biden and others from the administration to discuss nuclear
issues.
"This is administration which is really engaged from President (Barack) Obama down
in these issues," he told AAP.
"(They) seem to understand the extent to which the US was at the head of the
sleepwalking brigade over the last decade."
Aside from the threat posed by states with a nuclear arsenal, Mr Evans admits there
is a real potential threat posed by terrorists.
This was because of the scale of unsecured weapons or the relative ease with which
terrorists could access fissile material and build a weapon.
"They are in storage around the place, battlefield nuclear weapons that are frankly
not bigger than the size of a large artillery shell and able to be fired from a
ordinary large howitzer-type field gun which have the destructive potential
capability of a Hiroshima-style bomb," Mr Evans said.
"These things are around, in storage, and transportable. You have to acknowledge
that, in Russia in particular, there are anxieties about the extent to which this
stuff is fully locked up."
The commission, which was initiated by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year, is due
to report at the end of the year.
Mr Evans told the inquiry his committee would put forward a short, medium and
long-term agenda for disarmament.
In the medium term - by around 2025 - the commission would be proposing a reduction
in the 27,000 nuclear warheads still out there.
He told reporters the size of any remaining stockpile, which nuclear states would
want as a deterrent, would be highly controversial.
"One would be thinking of the low hundreds or better," he said.
"On the face of it you don't need to be able to destroy the world 35 times over in
order to retain minimum deterrent capability."