UPDATE: 6:38 p.m. EDT — President Barack Obama
stressed the progress that has been made in reducing nuclear materials
around the globe in closing remarks Friday at the Nuclear Security
Summit in Washington, D.C. The president said enriched uranium and
plutonium have been removed from 50 facilities in 30 countries, ensuring
the material “will never fall into the hands of terrorists.”
When asked about statements made by Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump that Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons due
to aggressive actions from North Korea, Obama said comments did come up
on the sidelines of the summit.
“The person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign
policy ... or the world generally,” Obama said, referring to Trump
without using his name.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was notably absent from the summit.
Obama said more work must be done with the Kremlin, however nuclear
arsenals in the U.S. and Russia are at their lowest levels in 60 years.
The president noted that once Poland and Indonesia finish removing
nuclear materials, Central Europe and Southeast Asia will be completely
free of nuclear materials.
Original story:
U.S. President Barack Obama announced a series of new measures Friday
to mitigate the threat of nuclear weapons and keep terrorists from
acquiring them during the last day of the Nuclear Security Summit in
Washington, D.C. The new nuclear safeguards included the first public
inventory of the United States’ stock of highly enriched uranium, the
elimination of all enriched uranium in Indonesia and the removal of
large amounts of nuclear matter from Germany.
During the summit, the president hailed an amended 1980 treaty —
known as the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material
— that has now been ratified by 102 nations, saying that would make it
harder for terrorists to access warheads. The treaty was amended in 2005
to legally require that countries protect nuclear facilities and
material, even for peaceful domestic use, storage and transport.
“Working together, our nations have made it harder for terrorists to get their hands on nuclear material,” Obama
said Friday. The "key treaty" is expected to become effective soon.
Obama was expected to take questions from the press Friday night at
5:40 p.m. EDT at the conclusion of the summit. To watch a live stream
of the news conference, click
here.
U.S.
President Barack Obama meets with French President Francois Hollande
(R) at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., March 31, 2016.
Photo: Reuters
He also noted that the international community needs to remain
vigilant and that the threat of terrorists getting their hands on nukes
remains real even with the amended treaty.
"There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a
nuclear bomb or nuclear material, they would certainly use it to kill as
many people as possible,"
Obama said.
The president also cheered the Iranian nuclear agreement, saying that
the accord — one of the highest-profile anti-nuclear proliferation
deals since Obama’s nuclear summits began in 2010 — was working.
“After nearly two years of intensive negotiations, backed by
strong sanctions, the countries represented in this room achieved what
decades of animosity and rhetoric did not: a long-term deal that closes
off every possible path to building a nuclear weapon and subjects Iran
to the most comprehensive nuclear inspections ever negotiated,” Obama
said during a meeting at the summit with members of the United Nations
Security Council.
The 2016 Nuclear Security Summit is the last of four
meetings between approximately 50 nations since 2010. The countries, in
past summits in Washington, D.C., South Korea and the Netherlands, had
reached consensus on deals to remove highly enriched uranium from 12
countries, shutdown or convert high enrichment facilities to low
enrichment capacity and upgrade the security in 32 buildings that store
nuclear materials, according to
the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
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