World leaders, nuclear security experts arrive in Washington
"There is no margin for error here, and I think Obama intuitively understood that as soon as he got to the Senate," former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a Ploughshares Fund board member, tells the Washington Post. Hagel co-sponsored nuclear security legislation with Senate colleagues Barack Obama and Richard Lugar (R-IN) and traveled with them to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan to visit some of the most dangerous sites in the world.
As President, Obama has identified nuclear terrorism as "the most immediate and extreme threat to global security." His leadership on this issue will be put to the test this week as he tries to persuade the 46 foreign leaders arriving in Washington to care as much as he does about securing the material that could be used to create a bomb.
Taking the lead on the nongovernmental side is the Fissile Materials Working Group (FMWG), an umbrella organization for groups and independent experts working on nuclear issues.
At the end of two days, notes the Post article, the summit is scheduled to produce a communique calling for a crackdown on smuggling, support for past U.N. resolutions on the subject, and standards for securing highly enriched uranium and plutonium stocks. In addition, the participants will endorse a detailed "work plan" to accomplish the task of locking down all loose nuclear materials in four years.
Be sure to check out the graphic representation of the issues at hand, the goals of the summit and the major players, based on data provided by the Ploughshares-funded Federation of American Scientists.
(And stay tuned to the FMWG website for the latest information about progress being made at the summit.)
Washington Post
