Sarkozy Pushes Nuclear Energy in Mideast

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 20, 2008

PARIS, Jan. 19 -- For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, nuclear reactors are the bridge between the West and the Islamic world.

Currently the world's most aggressive salesman for nuclear power, Sarkozy has visited multiple Muslim states in the last six weeks -- including the globe's biggest oil producers -- to peddle French nuclear technology or make multibillion-dollar deals.

"Why should Arab countries be deprived of the energy of the future?" Sarkozy asked in an interview with al-Jazeera TV during a Middle East tour this past week. "Terrorism flourishes in the embrace of despair and backwardness. We want to help Arab countries develop, and we want to upgrade the economies of the 21st century."

Since December, Sarkozy has signed deals with or offered nuclear technical advice to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Libya, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco.

He is attempting to promote a global revival of the nuclear industry at a time of record-breaking energy prices and strong international concern over global warming. Nuclear technology does not contribute directly to global warming because it does not burn fuel or emit greenhouse gases.

Sarkozy also describes the contracts as a way to boost the French economy and burnish his country's flagging technological and diplomatic image abroad. The companies that develop and build the nuclear power plants are owned primarily by the French government.

France has long been a world leader in nuclear power, currently relying on it for 80 percent of electricity needs. But the "for sale" sign that Sarkozy has hung on French nuclear technology has alarmed critics who say nuclear proliferation could make an already volatile Middle East more dangerous.

"The countries where France is planning to build new plants are mostly nondemocratic regimes or dictatorships," said St¿phane Lhomme, spokesman for Exit Nuclear Network, a French-based umbrella group of anti-nuclear associations. "The main concern is not that an Islamic country ends up with the atomic bomb; the main risk is the possibility of making dirty bombs with nuclear material."

U.A.E. Foreign Affairs Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan responded to similar criticism this past week after the emirates signed a deal with France to build two third-generation nuclear reactors.

"The U.A.E. is conducting wide consultations to create a responsible framework for the evaluation and possible implementation of a peaceful nuclear program, ensuring compliance with the highest standards of nonproliferation, safety and security," he said.

France's agreement to sell nuclear technology to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi has proved the most controversial of the deals. "The risk of proliferation goes up with every country that uses nuclear energy," Gernot Erler, Germany's energy minister, said after news of the arrangement with Libya.

Sarkozy has countered that the Libyan leader's decision in 2003 to halt his country's weapons programs and terrorist activity deserved to be rewarded and that the agreement could be an inducement to rogue countries to follow suit.

The nuclear pacts with Arab countries are part of Sarkozy's pet project to create an informal Mediterranean cooperation council. But he said he is willing to "help any country which wants to acquire civilian nuclear power."

Already he is pursuing two of the hottest nuclear markets in the world -- China and India. Late last year, France inked a multibillion-dollar deal to build two reactors in southern China, and Sarkozy is hoping to sign a nuclear energy accord with India during a visit this month. Argentina, Chile, Vietnam and Indonesia also are reportedly discussing the possibility of buying French-designed reactors.

But it is his agreements with the Middle East that have drawn the most attention. "This is the first time an intergovernmental nuclear accord of this importance has been signed in the Gulf, and it is a very big development," said Anne Lauvergeon, who heads France's nuclear giant, Areva. The company will help build the two reactors in Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven emirates.

She said the contracts will be worth billions of dollars but declined to cite a specific amount.

Sarkozy's sales trip came just after the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic alliance of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., announced that it planned to have a joint nuclear program operational by 2025.

With oil prices hitting record levels -- bouncing up to $100 a barrel last month before settling at the current $90 level -- many of the wealthy Arab oil exporters are enjoying unprecedented economic development. That is straining power grids and stretching capacities for desalinated water in many of the desert Gulf states.

Those rapidly expanding energy demands, coupled with warnings that oil reserves could be depleted in four to five decades, have prompted the oil-rich states to consider nuclear power alternatives.

"Forty years from now there will be no oil left, and in 100 years, no more gas," Sarkozy told reporters on the trip, adding that he believes nuclear power will be the replacement. "It is the energy of the future."

But some analysts say that nuclear development is likely to heighten military tensions and drive a regional arms race. Already the advanced state of Iran's civilian energy programs have generated allegations by the United States, France and others that Iran aspires to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

"If you tell Arab nations they are not allowed civilian nuclear power because they are Arab, you give an extraordinary bonus to Iran, which has made that its whole argument," Sarkozy said on the recent Middle Eastern trip.

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.