Aiming for Security for All Nuclear Materials in Four Years

16 April 2010

World leaders gathered for the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

World leaders agreed this week to protect all nuclear materials within four years to stop the possibility of nuclear terrorism.

Leaders from forty-seven countries gathered in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit. The president said groups like al-Qaida would surely use a nuclear weapon if they got one.

BARACK OBAMA: "All this, in turn, requires something else, which is something more fundamental. It will require a new mindset -- that we summon the will, as nations and as partners, to do what this moment in history demands."

Progress on a work plan for securing nuclear materials can be discussed when South Korea holds the next summit in two years.

Several nations made individual promises, including Ukraine. It promised to give up all of its highly enriched uranium by two thousand twelve.

The United States and Russia signed an agreement to dispose of sixty-eight tons of weapons-grade plutonium. They plan to use the plutonium as fuel for civilian nuclear reactors.

Last week, President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a nuclear arms agreement in the Czech Republic. It calls for America and Russia to each deploy a limit of one thousand five hundred fifty long-distance nuclear weapons -- a cut of about thirty percent.