Jonas Gahr Støre maintains a weekly schedule that likely would exhaust most "normal" folks by Monday afternoon. He's also passionate about a number of issues, and this week, a new looming atomic threat was on his agenda.

"Nuclear proliferation is not yesterday's news," he told his audience at the conference organized by the Norwegian Red Cross, an organization Støre once headed. "It's a burning question for both today and the future."

Støre let it be known that he's worried not only about the possibility of a new nuclear arms race, but even more over what he sees as a lack of public outrage over such a development.

Støre, from the Norwegian Labour Party, urged his audience to remember the political process involved in earlier campaigns against nuclear proliferation, and how volunteer organizations all over the world got involved.

He said the challenge now is to use that knowledge and experience to halt a new arms race.

Norway, he noted, has taken the initiative along with several other countries including Great Britain and South Africa, to drum up attention around nuclear containment and non-proliferation. He said such initiatives can contribute towards control of nuclear weapons.

He said later that developing countries are trying to acquire nuclear weapons for security reasons, while existing atomic powers are building new and more advanced weapons systems. He didn't identify any specific countries, but Iran's efforts have long been in the news, and both the British and the Americans are known to be modernizing their nuclear weapons systems.

Støre's concern was shared by Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her efforts towards banning landmines. Williams said she was "shocked" that there's no public fury over current nuclear proliferation.

Another Nobel Prize winner at the conference, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, called her homeland one of the world's most mine-infested countries, and the government wants to maintain them to prevent another invasion from Iraq.