Buffett ready to put up cash to fight nuclear arms

Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett is pictured in the audience as U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the 2010 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, October 5, 2010.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Weapons of mass destruction are the biggest problem facing mankind, billionaire Warren Buffett said on Friday, offering to spend significant amounts of money to help reduce their threat.

"Throughout my lifetime I will be interested in this subject and I will back that interest up with money," he told Reuters.

Buffett, who has donated much of his fortune to charity, had pledged $50 million to back a proposal to set up an atomic fuel bank that was approved by member states of the U.N. nuclear agency in Vienna on Friday.

His donation through the non-governmental Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) was matched by the United States and other governments, bringing the total to $150 million for the plan aimed at preventing the spread of atomic bombs as more countries seek nuclear energy.

Buffett, one of the world's most successful investors, said he believed weapons of mass destruction were the most important problem facing the world for the next century.

"If the project sounds like a good one and has any real chance of reducing the probabilities of the terrible use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons I'm prepared to put up significant money," he said in a brief telephone interview.

"Something can come up that requires a million dollar or something can come up that requires a $100 million."

DISARMAMENT AGENDA

The chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Buffett unexpectedly announced in 2006 he would give away the bulk of his fortune, worth about $40 billion, mostly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Proponents say a nuclear fuel bank could help meet growing demand from dozens of countries, some in the conflict-prone Middle East, for technical help in launching nuclear energy programs without increasing the risk of weapons proliferation.

The uranium needed as fuel for nuclear reactors can also be enriched to high levels and provide material for bombs, making the technology especially sensitive.

Approval of the plan was a priority for the Obama administration, which has set itself an ambitious nuclear disarmament agenda and has a declared vision of eventually ridding the world of atomic weapons.

It comes at a time when the new START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Buffett, one of President Barack Obama's closest defenders in the business community, said the pact was "enormously important" and he believed it would be ratified.

Asked about Obama's vision of a world free of nuclear arms, he said: "It has to be achievable over a very long period of time ... it is the number one problem of mankind."

He added: "We really have to prevent weapons of tremendous potential harm being used by these people who have evil intentions ... this is not a problem that we can wish away."

(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)