PAKISTAN TESTS CRUISE MISSILE

The Pakistani military says it has successfully tested a cruise missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile has a range of about 350km and is made with stealth technology, making it very difficult to detect by radar. President Perez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz have congratulated the scientists and engineers involved in developing the new missile.

INTERVIEW WITH HANS BLIX, FORMER UN CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR

The former United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is currently visiting Australia. Mr Blix, who's now the chairman of the Swedish-based Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission is also the 2007 Sydney Peace Prize winner. He told me the world shouldn't be too concerned about Pakistan's latest missile launch.

HANS BLIX, CHAIRMAN OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION COMMISSION: Well, they have done so before and India presumably too have missiles that they can use for nuclear weapons so I don't think there is any great news in this, but of course it does not add to relaxation of the situation any way.

LEE LIN CHIN: Is the world becoming a more dangerous place?

HANS BLIX: I don't think so. You can have a nuclear power without nuclear weapons. My own country, Sweden, is one of them. I have just come from South Korea were they have 20 nuclear power units and they are certainly not going for nuclear weapons. You have many other countries as well. You can also have nuclear weapons without nuclear power - Israel has nuclear weapons but they do not have nuclear power. It is a question of will and the will is dependent on certain factors, one of them being security. Creation of security through detente - global and regional - is vital to avoid the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

LEE LIN CHIN: Nevertheless, the nuclear club is getting bigger and bigger and with countries like India operating outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the treaty, do you think, really effective any more?

HANS BLIX: It is under certain strain but I wouldn't say that the club is getting bigger and bigger. You get the impression that the world is milling with would-be nuclear weapons states - that is not so. We have had the usual suspects, if I may call them that way. You have Libya, which has gone away from it, you have Iraq that was taken away from it and you have Iran and North Korea with which there are negotiations and I don't really see any other on the horizon. I also add that we have had a number of successes - the Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan had nuclear weapons in their territory and negotiations led them to transfer these weapons to Russia. South Africa, which had nuclear weapons, also dismantled their nuclear weapon. So, the Non-Proliferation Treaty has been to some extent a success as well. But we have to prevent that it erode and disintegrate.

LEE LIN CHIN: On the subject of Iraq, what do you make of the current situation there?

HANS BLIX: I was head of UN inspectors in 2003 and I think what we have seen after the invasion is tragedy. I can only see one positive result and that was Saddam, who was a brutal and bloody dictator, was removed. But the allies went in in order to remove weapons of mass destruction, they said, and these weapons didn't exist and we as inspectors said we had carried out 700 inspections at 500 different sites and hadn't seen any and that we could not guarantee that there weren't any because it's very difficult to prove the negative. Things that are unaccounted for, then they may or they may not exist. So, the weapons were not there. Another reason given for the invasion was that they would demonstrate to al-Qaeda that they must be kept in their place. Suspicion was voiced that al-Qaeda was in Iraq. In fact, they were not in Iraq but after a number of years of occupation, now they are there.

LEE LIN CHIN: Mr Blix, we appreciate your time and thank you very much.