RAND chief wants new approach to non-proliferation

LONDON (Reuters) - It is time to consider new ways of encouraging countries such as Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, the head of one of the world's leading public policy think tanks said on Monday.

James Thomson, president and chief executive officer of RAND Corporation, told Reuters in an interview that the world was entering a new nuclear age that required fresh and more effective ways of dealing with the spread of weapons.

He said there was a "good chance" of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next five years.

It was important to understand why countries sought nuclear weapons and mitigating the need, he said.

Thomson said the most tried way of stopping countries from developing nuclear weapons has been to use sanctions and other methods to block the gathering of materiel.

This was the thinking and methodology behind the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear power and stop its spread as a military option.

But there was only so much that this could achieve.

"NPT itself is limited ... and the IAEA is limited," he said. "So what we've seen is you are able to get to nuclear weapons, or close to nuclear weapons, without worrying about the

IAEA."

Thomson, whose influential, non-profit research institution, gets nearly half of its roughly $230 million (115 million pounds) a year income through contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense and other U.S. security agencies, said prestige and security were at the heart of much proliferation.

Undermining this needed to be the focus, he said.

Iran's nuclear programme, which Tehran says is for energy purposes only, has put it at loggerheads with the West, which says it is a cover to build bombs.

"There is a good chance we are looking at an Iranian nuclear weapon ... within five years," Thomson said.

He said it was necessary to understand that the country was developing a nuclear programme in a state of geopolitical isolation.

"They've got no friends and, from their perspective, they have lots of enemies," he said.

Thomson suggested that the West should be looking at ways to lessen the value of developing nuclear weapons in such places.

He noted, for example, that German and Japanese concerns about security last century had been assuaged by various guarantees from the United States.

(Editing by Keith Weir)