N-proliferation - Sokolski's vision for happy ending involves US, China, N. Korea, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Egypt and UN

Despite the tensions and uncertainties, Henry Sokolski, ... executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, can envision a happy ending.

It starts, he says, with the United States pressuring China to stigmatize North Korea and cut off its cash, giving the money-starved, secluded North incentive to zip up its weapons plans.

It continues with a friendly government in Iraq, and with security guarantees to neighboring Iran - once Iraq's enemy - and others in the region. "And Iran not only goes democratic, it turns into the South Africa of the Middle East," embracing reforms and giving up its weapons ambitions.

Meantime the United States leans on Israel to stop its nuclear weapons production and recognizes Egypt for its restraint in not starting a bomb program in response to Israel's.

"And we get a U.N. resolution passed that says we can go after folks who go offshore with nuclear weapons activity and do a cleanup operation when it comes to people transiting and materials transiting and the like," Sokolski says. "No war. You'll notice, no war."

Is it realistic?

"Why not?" he says. "What's the point of being a world leader if you can't have happy endings?"

[Henry Sokolski was a nonproliferation adviser in the Defense Department during the first Bush administration.]

[Source: Stephen Koff (Plain Dealer Bureau Chief), "'Peaceful' nuclear power fuels spread of weapons", Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 27, 2003]