Nuclear threats under control in unstable world: expert

PARIS: North Korea and Iran may be pushing ahead with their nuclear plans and Vladimir Putin may have threatened to use Russia's weapons, but important red lines have not been crossed, a top expert told AFP.

“The nuclear order might be assailed, shaken and contested, but its foundations are still solid and its most essential elements are still there,” French nuclear expert Bruno Tertrais said in an interview.

“North Korea, China, India and Pakistan remain determined to establish themselves as mature nuclear powers, and don´t care about entreaties to moderate, let alone disarm,” said Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), a French think-tank.

Iran is continuing its enrichment of uranium to levels far higher than 3.67 percent, in violation of a near-defunct 2015 deal with Western powers, and is closing in on the 90 percent needed to produce an atomic bomb.

Meanwhile North Korea last year enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution and has since fired several intercontinental ballistic missiles, in violation of UN resolutions.