Kofi Annan speech on nuclear proliferation

(29 Nov 2006) 1. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivering speech at Princeton University 2. Audience cutaway 3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General: "Efforts are needed both to reduce arms and to reduce conflict. Likewise, efforts are needed to achieve both disarmament and non-proliferation. Yet each side waits for the other to move first. The result is that mutually assured destruction has been replaced by mutually assured paralysis." 4. Cutaway 5. (SOUNDBITE): (English) Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General: "I said earlier this year that we are sleepwalking towards a disaster. In truth, it is worse than that. We are asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft. Unless we wake up and take control, the outcome is all too predictable." 6. Audience listening 7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General: "We will not go in without their consent and in fact, speaking honestly, if I do not have the consent of the Sudanese government, I don't see any government that will offer me troops to go in there. You will not get troops through UN peacekeeping and you will not get them if you decided to put together a coalition of the willing, because nobody wants to fight their way in, and the Sudanese government has been very, very adamant." 8. Tilt down audience standing and applauding 9. Annan being presented with the "crystal tiger" award by student Cindy Chou of the crystal tiger award committee 10. Annan shaking hands with students from the crystal tiger award committee STORYLINE: The nations of the world should simultaneously seek to disarm nuclear powers and prevent additional nations from acquiring nuclear arms, Kofi Annan said on Tuesday in one of his last major addresses as secretary-general of the United Nations. Annan, whose second five-year term ends January 1, also said progress cannot be made on either arms control objective unless the international community can keep in check the threat of terrorism, which increases the risk that the weapons will be used. "I said earlier this year that we are sleepwalking toward disaster,"' he said. "In truth, it is much worse than that. We are asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft. Unless we wake up and take control, the outcome is all too predictable." Annan said governments of the world have wasted chances in recent years to strengthen the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty because they could not agree on which of the dual goals should receive a higher priority. The truth is that both goals are equally important, he said. Without disarmament, Annan said, it is harder to persuade non-nuclear nations not to develop the weapons. The treaty been weakened in recent years, Annan said, because there has been disagreement over how to apply it in India and Pakistan, North Korea and in the Middle East. He called for nations with nuclear weapons to develop specific timetables for disarming the estimated 27,000 nuclear weapons currently believed to exist. The nuclear fuel left over, he said, could be used to help nations produce nuclear energy. Annan said it is a mistake to try to separate the problems of poverty, disease, terrorism or interstate conflict from that posed by nuclear proliferation. Annan was speaking at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Princeton students presented Annan with the Crystal Tiger award as an "agent of progress." When he steps down next month, Annan is to be replaced by Ban Ki-moon, a career diplomat who served most recently as South Korea's foreign minister. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...