The Obama administration yesterday formally announced its intention to host a top-level Global Nuclear Security Summit next March (see GSN, July 7).
(Jul. 9) -
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks yesterday with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. Obama's administration formally announced plans yesterday to host an international nuclear security summit in March (Saul Loeb/Getty Images).
The meeting would give governments a forum to consider cooperative efforts to track and protect weapon-usable materials and to safeguard against nuclear terrorism (White House release, July 8).
The summit would include leaders from 25 to 30 nations, Agence France-Presse reported.
President Barack Obama "believes nuclear terrorism is the most immediate and extreme threat to global security," said Mark Lippert, chief of staff of the National Security Council.
"We think this is another important piece of the nonproliferation agenda that the president has put forward," Lippert said, noting that the meeting was intended to promote multilateralism among what has been the nation's "robust" bilateral nonproliferation partnerships (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, July 8).
The announcement came while Obama was in L'Aquila, Italy, for the annual summit of leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations.
The leaders yesterday issued a statement promoting moves toward global nuclear disarmament, a strengthened Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and prevention of nuclear terrorism.
The statement endorses various nonproliferation initiatives, including the Obama administration's commitment to ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and potential negotiations on a fissile material cutoff treaty.
"We are all committed to seeking a safer world for all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons, in accordance with the goals of the NPT," the leaders stated. "We welcome the nuclear disarmament measures implemented thus far by the nuclear-weapon states among G-8 members."
They noted this week's agreement by the United States and Russia to establish a pact to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty before it expires in December and called on "all states to undertake further steps in nuclear disarmament and to greater transparency" (see GSN, July 7).
The nations affirmed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's central role in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons as well as nonproliferation safeguards implemented by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They said, though, that "measures are needed to address noncompliance, to include real and immediate consequences for states that withdraw from the NPT while in violation of it, to include appropriate action by the U.N. Security Council, and full use of IAEA inspection authorities."
The statement "calls on all states to fully implement [U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540] on preventing nonstate actors from obtaining [weapons of mass destruction], their means of delivery and related materials," and indicated the eight states' continued support for nonproliferation programs such as the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.
The G-8 member nations -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- also called for resolutions to nuclear disputes with Iran and North Korea (see related GSN stories, today; Group of Eight release, July 8).
Speaking before the summit, Obama reaffirmed his commitment to using diplomacy to address nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea.
After meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, Obama said they both believed that "it's very important for the world community to speak to countries like Iran and North Korea and encourage them to take a path that does not result in a nuclear arms race in places like the Middle East" (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, July 8).