Uranium? What Uranium?

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors
discuss the Libyan uranium problem.

Less than a month after French President Sarkosy said that Colonel Gaddafi could be trusted with nuclear reactors, we discover that Libya has still to surrender 200 barrels of uranium as per its 2003 agreement to abandon its nuclear weapons programme in return for the West lifting sanctions.

Of absolutely no surprise to anyone, the handover of uranium was the responsibility of the IAEA, who never met an illicit nuclear weapons programme in the hands of a would-be Bond villain that it couldn't completely fail to do anything about.

Evening the Odds

Leave it to the French to bend logic until it breaks as President Sarkosy explains why his country is helping Libya to build nuclear power plants.

"Nuclear power is the energy of the future," he said. "If we don't give the energy of the future to the countries of the southern Mediterranean, how will they develop themselves? And if they don't develop, how will we fight terrorism and fanaticism?"

The president added that if the West considered that Arab countries were "not sensible enough to use civilian nuclear power", this would risk a "war of civilizations".

Aside from the fact that Libya already has plenty of oil to produce power, that Colonel Gaddafi is as flaky as a box of corn flakes, and that he has a track record of trying to get his hands on WMDs, if there is even the remotest chance of a "war or civilisations" wouldn't be prudent to forget appeasing our enemies in favour of making certain that they be kept as far from getting nuclear weapons as possible?

But then France wouldn't have anyone to surrender to.