Our correspondent Mehdi Geramifard has talked to Jonathan Granoff, president of the "Global Security Institute" based in Pennsylvania on North Korea's nuclear test.

Question: What is your reaction to North Korea's nuclear test? Could it be a clear response to the US preemption policy announced in 2002?

Answer: The government that runs North Korea has really never come out of the mindset of the Korean war. There was probably a period when George Bush Senior removed the nuclear weapons from the Peninsula in the early 1990s that relaxed the tensions a little bit, and then I would say in September of 2005 when it looked that there was progress being made before the United States caused the banking capacity of North Korea to come to a halt. I think that North Korea has responded to being under a continual sense of threat specifically by the Bush doctrine but by an ongoing threat and this quest for a nuclear weapons capacity long predates the Bush administration policy. I think the people running North Korea have always viewed their security as being based on a military model. That's regrettable because if you look at the progress that freedom has brought to the people of the South Korea when their military government was dissolved and they became a free democratic country about twenty years ago, you can see that the potential of the Korean people to live in peace and prosperity is enormous.   

Question: A professor at the University of Chicago "Bruce Cummings" has said the UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed that and then the US invaded and said the UN goal is not to disarm but to go nuclear. What is your reaction? What is the ultimate goal of the UN? Is it to go nuclear or to oppose the nuclear states?

Answer: The United Nations is the repository of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the NPT sets a norm of moving toward nuclear disarmament. The very first resolution of the United Nations called for the establishment of a commission to deal with the problem raised by the discovery of atomic energy; this very first resolution of the United Nations calls for the elimination of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction. A resolution 687 which was the enabling resolution for the use of force in the Persian Gulf War, calls for a Weapons of Mass Destruction free zone in the Middle East; that's the Security Council resolution. Resolution 1540 calls for countries to develop national means to prohibit the development of nuclear weapons. Your country, Iran, has called for progress on nuclear disarmament under the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the resolution 687. It's unambiguous that the United Nations' system supports movement toward nuclear disarmament.

Question: North Korea's nuclear test is the logical extension of the failure of the international community to obtain a universal ban on the testing of the nuclear weapons known as Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. So how do you explain the future of this treaty the CTBT?

Answer: I'm hoping that people will realize that it is very difficult to convince your children not to smoke cigarette if you have a cigar in your mouth. There must be moral consistency between one's actions and one's statements. So it's my hope that the United States as you know was the first country to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but under our system in the United States, for a treaty to become a law it must be ratified by two thirds of the Senate. So it's my hope that we will ratify the treaty which will be the first country to sign and thus put forward strongly the proposition that no body should be testing nuclear weapons. So walking down this terrible ladder we have thousands of weapons on trigger alert which threaten every body, every body on the planet. Remember my country has several thousands of nuclear weapons. It is time to walk down this ladder and the first step in walking down this dangerous ladder is to have a test ban treaty. If we had a test ban treaty, they'll be a tremendous pressure on North Korea and I think that the pressure will be much more effective than just condemning them. The weapons themselves are the problem. The weapons don't bring security. The weapons should be viewed with the same disgusted plague. The plague as a weapon is disgusting in anybody's hand. Nuclear weapons are similarly terrible instrument.  

Question: The US government has tested these weapons more than one thousand times and has a conventional arsenal unrivaled in human history. Shouldn't the US take the lead in prohibiting any more tests by any one any where?

Answer: Absolutely, it doesn't make sense for us to take the position that we don't want to lead in prohibiting test and then condemn others who want to test. It is not consistent. One of theses things that I'm working to do is to try to persuade my government to support a teat ban treaty, I agree. I don't think that any body should be developing and relying on nuclear weapons including my own country. By the way, I think nuclear weapons are an unworthy of modern civilization.