US President Barack Obama is to call for unprecedented global action to secure nuclear stocks and keep weapons grade material out of the hands of extremists at a two-day summit opening today.
The White House says Obama called the 47-nation conference to put together the most coordinated effort yet to tackle what one adviser called the most dangerous security threat haunting the US and the rest of the world.
“It is absolutely fundamental to view this summit with the starting point of the grave nature of the threat of nuclear terrorism,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy US national security adviser. “We know that terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, are pursuing the materials to build a nuclear weapon and we know that they have the intent to use one.”
The nuclear security summit — the biggest gathering of world leaders led by a US president since 1945 — marks Obama’s boldest effort yet to exercise global leadership on one of his principal foreign policy themes, non-proliferation.
Obama wants fellow leaders to agree to his timeframe of securing all nuclear materials within four years and a final summit communique will likely include calls for tougher prosecutions of traffickers in weapons grade materials.
He enters the meeting, an attempt to halt the theft, sale or smuggling of unsecured nuclear materials, with his political standing enhanced by a new disarmament deal with Russia and by enacting historic domestic healthcare reform.
Obama will also flex diplomatic muscle on the sidelines of the summit, with a flurry of one-on-one meetings with other leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and South African President Jacob Zuma.
The White House also announced on Saturday that Obama would meet his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych for the first time today.
Some key world leaders will not be at the summit, however, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a tense relationship with Obama and reportedly fears that Muslim states will raise Israel’s undeclared nuclear status.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, fighting for his job ahead of an election next month, also sent his excuses, as did Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who is embroiled in his own healthcare push.
The summit itself will focus primarily on separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium stocks, rather than radiological “dirty” bombs, which US officials see as a threat, but less potentially catastrophic than nuclear devices.
While the summit is designed at keeping nuclear material out of the hands of extremist groups — two states not at the summit, Iran and North Korea, will cast a shadow because of the confrontations over their nuclear programs.
Washington is leading an effort to frame a new and biting set of sanctions on Iran, and will seek to lock in Hu’s cooperation, after months trying to bring China and Russia on board.
The meeting is the fruition of a long-term effort by Obama to deprive terrorist groups of the means to build nuclear weapons.
Upon becoming a senator in 2005, Obama joined Republican Senator Richard Lugar’s efforts to secure global nuclear stocks, and on an early foreign trip as president he promised to work to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.
US officials are expecting the nations to agree on a series of steps to secure their own material and help pay to put the stocks of less well-off countries under lock and key.
They also expect some leaders to unveil specific actions, similar to Chile’s decision to ship a stock of highly enriched uranium to the US.
The summit follows Obama’s announcement of a new US nuclear strategy — which imposed limits on the possible use of the US nuclear arsenal, and after Thursday’s signing of a new disarmament treaty with Russia in Prague.
The conference is also a precursor to the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference next month.
Non-nuclear states who are signed up to that treaty typically complain that nuclear powers are not living up to their end of the bargain, by taking sufficient steps toward disarmament.
So the new US Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia may be seen as an attempt to meet those concerns and jump-start the review conference.
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