United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have the right to develop nuclear energy but on the condition that they do not build nuclear weapons and comply to the International Atomic Energy Agency standards.
"Today's headlines concern Iran - rightly so, for basic treaty obligations and commitments are at stake," he said in London on Tuesday.
"When we step back from the headlines, it should be clear that we cannot continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, until the regime is buried beneath a cascade of nuclear proliferation," Annan said in London.
Talking of missed opportunities to strengthen the NPT regime, he said, "We cannot afford any more such squandered chances."
Reflecting on his term in New York, Annan said, "You cannot do this kind of job for as long as I have done in the world we live in and not have regrets," he replied bluntly.
"I do have regrets. I regret that I was unable to breach the divisions amongst member States over the Iraq war. The divisions are still there. They are healing, but I was deeply disappointed that I could not help bridge the differences," he added.
Annan also spoke of Iraq's Oil-for-Food Programme, voicing regret that he had not paid attention to problems it faced sooner. "Whether I would have been able to deal with it or not, given the way it was set up and the responsibility centres were distributed, remains an open question. But I should have probably paid more attention to the difficulties in that," he said.
The UN, he said has been hurt by 'politically-motivated campaigns where instances of corruption by staff members are blown completely out of proportion'. He pointed out that after a $36 million probe, and the kind of scrubbing the UN was given, only one staff member was found to maybe have taken some $150,000 out of a $64 billion programme.
"If there was a scandal, it was with the companies and not so much with UN individuals," he said, adding, "There may have been instances of mismanagement, yes, maybe we did not manage it effectively, but not corruption."