WASHINGTON - Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao of China are instructing their diplomats to work on potential sanctions to make clear to Iran the cost of continued nuclear defiance, the White House said Monday.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of a U.S.-hosted summit on nuclear proliferation.
White House national security aide Jeff Bader sought to find common ground at their hour-long meeting. Bader said the Chinese were “prepared to work with us.”
He called it another sign of international unity on the issue.
Obama optimistically opened the 47-nation nuclear summit, boosted by Ukraine’s announcement that it will give up its weapons-grade uranium. More sobering: Obama’s counterterrorism chief pointedly warned that al-Qaida is vigorously pursuing material and expertise for a bomb.
Ukraine’s decision dovetailed with Obama’s goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide within four years — an objective that the White House hopes will be endorsed by all summit countries at a closing session Tuesday, even if the means to accomplish it are unclear.
Before formally opening the summit with a reception and working dinner, Obama held a series of one-on-one meetings with leaders from China, Jordan, Ukraine, Armenia and Malaysia. Presidential aides billed the summit as the largest gathering of world leaders hosted by an American president since the 1945 conference in San Francisco that founded the United Nations.
Obama looks for 'concrete actions'
In a brief exchange with reporters, Obama said of the summit: “It’s impressive. I think it’s an indication of how deeply concerned everybody should be with the possibilities of nuclear traffic, and I think at the end of this we’re going to see some very specific, concrete actions that each nation is taking that will make the world a little bit safer.”
The talks are a centerpiece of Obama’s broader agenda for ridding the world of nuclear weapons, a long-term process that he says should include gradual disarmament by the nuclear powers, stronger steps to head off a nuclear arms race and more urgent action to lock down tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that are the key building blocks of atomic weapons.
According to Harvard’s Belfer Center, there are about 3.5 million pounds of highly enriched uranium and half a million pounds of bomb-grade plutonium in the world. Combined, they could be used to build as many as 200,0000 nuclear weapons, or about 8½ times the world’s current total of 23,360 warheads.
Not all countries share Obama’s view that the nuclear-materials problem is a priority. Some think the bigger emphasis should be on disarmament, particularly by the United States and Russia, which despite recent reductions still possess 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arms.
At a parallel unofficial conference of more than 200 international nuclear experts, participants said too many leaders don’t share Obama’s urgency about nuclear ingredients.
“There is a great complacency among policymakers around the world that terrorist groups couldn’t make a nuclear bomb,” said Matthew Bunn of Harvard.
Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy focused on his home region, where both Pakistan and India are building up their nuclear arsenals.
“Unfortunately, I do not see this concern either in Pakistan or India about nuclear terrorism,” he said. “Both countries do not see the seriousness of this situation.”
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Seeking to highlight the urgency of the threat posed by terrorists in pursuit of a nuclear bomb, John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism chief, told reporters that al-Qaida is actively in search of the key ingredients for a bomb and the expertise to assemble it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36411468/ns/politics-white_house/
