Obama Warns Global Leaders Of Nuke Terrorism Dangers

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President Obama Warns Against Threat Of Nuclear Terrorism


As the 47-country Nuclear Security Summit opened in Washington this morning, President Barack Obama warned that only a concerted effort by the global community can head off the looming threat of nuclear terrorism.

"Two decades after the end of the Cold War, we face a cruel irony of history — the risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of [a] nuclear attack has gone up," Obama said in a brief speech to the summit’s first formal session. "It is increasingly clear that the danger of nuclear terrorism is one of the greatest threats to global security — to our collective security."

Obama told the more than three dozen heads of state who accepted his invitation for the Washington conclave that the nuclear terrorism issue is more threatening both for practical reasons and because those seeking the weapons are more ruthless.

"Just the smallest amount of plutonium — about the size of an apple — could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeed, they would surely use it. Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world — causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow at global peace and stability," Obama said.

Obama also announced that the next nuclear security summit will be held in South Korea in 2012. Overall, it’s a somewhat less ambitious schedule than Obama promised during his campaign for the White House, when he vowed to hold such a summit during his first year in office and every year thereafter.

Obama's initial remarks to the summit included something of a renunciation of what his aides and many abroad view as the go-it-alone approach the U.S. took to foreign policy issues under President George W. Bush.

"I believe strongly that the problems of the 21st century cannot be solved by any one nation acting in isolation — they must be solved by all of us coming together," Obama declared.

Obama called for concrete actions, and not just rhetoric, from the countries at the summit. Those nations attending were required to make a significant, specific promise to advance the meeting's goal. White House officials are already hailing Chile's return of nuclear materials to the U.S., Canada's promise to return similar materials and Ukraine's pledge to get rid of all highly enriched uranium on its soil.


Sources: MSNBC, Politico