The US fears terrorists may acquire 'loose nukes', writes MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
LEADERS REPRESENTING almost 50 nations will gather in Washington today for an unprecedented summit which the Obama administration hopes will help galvanise momentum towards ensuring nuclear materials do not fall into the hands of smugglers or terrorists.
The gathering takes place exactly one year after US president Barack Obama, standing in front of Prague’s historic castle, sketched his vision of a world free of atomic weapons.
While Obama’s chances of fulfilling a campaign pledge to “secure all loose nuclear materials around the world” in his first term always appeared unlikely, this week’s summit represents another step in his administration’s non-proliferation efforts.
It follows the publication of a new US nuclear military doctrine, the Nuclear Posture Review, and the signing of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Moscow last week, and comes ahead of next month’s international conference in New York to review the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This week’s summit, which draws together leaders from countries including Russia, China, India and Pakistan, focuses on the so-called “loose nukes” conundrum: the risk that the world’s stocks of weapons-grade nuclear material could fall into the wrong hands. It is estimated that enough such material exists to build more than 120,000 atomic bombs.
Opinions vary as to how much of that remains unsecured and vulnerable to theft. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, almost 1,300 incidents of nuclear smuggling have been recorded since 1993, including 18 incidents involving the trafficking of highly enriched uranium or plutonium.
Obama has described nuclear terrorism as “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” His aides note that al-Qaeda has sought unsuccessfully to acquire a nuclear weapon.
“Our biggest concerns right now are . . . the issues of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation; more countries obtaining nuclear weapons; those weapons being less controllable, less secure; nuclear materials floating around the globe,” Obama said in Prague last Thursday after signing the nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.
Obama’s challenge at this week’s summit will be to persuade his fellow leaders of the scale of the threat, and ensure the nuclear security agenda does not get sidelined by other foreign policy issues. The last-minute decision by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to withdraw from the gathering – apparently to avoid questions about his country’s unacknowledged nuclear arsenal – raised eyebrows.
“There’s a lot that has been done. There’s a lot more to do. And the key will be to convince policymakers and nuclear managers around the world that this is a threat,” said Matthew Bunn of Harvard University’s John F Kennedy school of government.
The main work of the summit will take place tomorrow, with Obama leading two plenary sessions. The first will focus on national commitments to secure nuclear material and the second will deal with international conventions aimed at strengthening nuclear controls.
Gary Samore, Obama’s chief adviser on limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, said both sessions would focus on the two fuels of most concern: separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium. “If we’re able to lock those down and deny them to non-state actors, then we have essentially solved the risk of nuclear terrorism,” he said.
Administration officials have said they anticipate a number of participating states will announce moves similar to that of Chile, which last month started transporting its highly enriched uranium to the US for safekeeping.
At the end of the two days, the summit is expected to result in a communique in which participants commit to strengthening nuclear safeguards. According to reports, the draft communique also includes a US proposal “to secure all vulnerable nuclear material” within four years.
Obama last week vowed that the summit would result in more than “some vague, gauzy statement”, but many observers have questioned how much can be achieved given the wariness of some participating states when it comes to divulging information about domestic nuclear programmes.
And, of course, there will be more than one elephant in the room. Neither Tehran nor Pyongyang will be represented.
Yesterday, just days after Iran revealed a new system it claimed would accelerate the uranium enrichment programme it has pursued in defiance of UN concerns, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that Obama’s new nuclear strategy represented an “implicit threat” to the Islamic republic.