US wants nations to help lock down N-materials within 4 yrs

WASHINGTON: The US today warned that al-Qaida has stepped up clandestine hunt for a nuclear bomb lending urgency to the upcoming historic nuclear summit, where President Barack Obama wants countries, including India, to help lock down the world's vulnerable atomic materials within four years.

White House has high expectations from the two-day Summit which, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be the largest assembly of world leaders hosted by an American President since the 1945 San Francisco conference which founded the UN.

The tone for the conference would be set by Obama by meeting with Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, the two new nuclear powers, tomorrow as well as leaders of South Africa and Kazakhstan, two countries that gave up nuclear weapons programme voluntarily.

A communique to be issued at the end of the Nuclear Security Summit recognises that nuclear terrorism is a serious threat and wants countries to endorse a pledge to take steps both at national and international level to strengthen nuclear security and prevent terrorists and criminal groups from gaining access to atomic weapons.

The text of the communique and other conference documents were finalised at the meeting here of US Sherpas which was chaired by Gary Samore, senior adviser to the US president on proliferation. India was represented at the meeting by Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao.

This thrust was outlined by Clinton in a speech on nuclear non-proliferation at the University of Louisville, Kentucky where she said that the nature of the atomic threat has changed.

"We no longer live in constant fear of a global nuclear war where we're in a standoff against the Russians with all of our nuclear arsenal on the ready, on a hair-trigger alert.

"But, as President Obama has said, the risk of a nuclear attack (by al-Qaida and other terror groups) has actually increased. And the potential consequences of mishandling this challenge are deadly," she said.

"We are trying to make this Summit the beginning of sustained international effort to lock down the world's vulnerable nuclear materials within four years and reduce the possibility that these materials will find their way into the hands of terrorists," Clinton said.

At the Summit on April 12-13, the US and Russia are to sign a long delayed agreement to dispose off tons of nuclear grade plutonium from cold war era nuclear weapons.

Clinton said that a nuclear attack anywhere could destroy the foundations of global order.

She said while the US and old Soviet Union are no longer locked in an atomic standoff, nuclear proliferation is a leading source of insecurity in the world today.

She claimed that nuclear proliferation by countries like North Korea and Iran endangers US forces, its allies and its broader global interests.