"Obama Vows Fresh Proliferation Push as Summit Ends"

[Clio the Leo]

Obama Vows Fresh Proliferation Push as Summit Ends

WASHINGTON — President Obama completed a first meeting of world leaders on combating nuclear terrorism with a list of specific commitments from dozens of nations to eliminate or lock down nuclear materials, in what he called a “bold and pragmatic” program to finish the task in the next four years.

But in a news conference after leading the conversation among 47 presidents, prime ministers and senior officials, Mr. Obama acknowledged that tough choices lay ahead on many of the far more politically volatile issues in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

He issued a specific warning to Iran, which was not represented at the conference, saying that after four years of failed efforts on sanctions, the penalties he was trying to win at the United Nations Security Council had to be significant enough to get the attention of the Iranian leadership.

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Obama said he had insisted to President Hu Jintao of China that in dealing with Iran: “Words have to mean something. There have to be some consequences.”

The meeting that Mr. Obama convened, and to a great degree stage-managed, was unlike any negotiations over arms control with the Soviets during the cold war or, more recently, the so-far fruitless talks to get North Korea to disarm. This was a far broader effort to persuade African, Latin American, Asian and European nations to agree on steps to deny terrorist groups the two materials necessary to make a bomb: plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

Mr. Obama began the session arguing that while superpower confrontation was far more remote, the risk of nuclear terrorism had never been greater, and he quoted the warning of Albert Einstein soon after the beginning of the nuclear age: “We are drifting towards a catastrophe beyond comparison.”

Mr. Obama deliberately narrowed the scope of the meeting to avoid some of the most contentious issues, and at a news conference on Tuesday he dodged questions about trying to get Pakistan to stop producing weapons-grade plutonium, or pressing Israel to acknowledge its nuclear arsenal. He simply urged them to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which both have rejected, along with India.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/world/14summit.html

[Cha]

1. Einstein knew. nt