Obama to offer plan for reducing nukes
Speech will focus on threat of nuclear terrorism
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will outline in a major speech today a blueprint for ridding the world of nuclear weapons that calls for the United States to reduce its reliance on history’s deadliest arms and lead a new international effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring them.
The plan would reverse the previous administration’s policy that made nuclear weapons a central pillar of U.S. security policy by preserving an arsenal of thousands of warheads, expanding the targets against which they could be used and embracing the development of new weapons.
Under Obama’s proposals, the United States also would return to its earlier policy of negotiating complex international arms agreements, an approach that the George W. Bush administration viewed as being too cumbersome and restricting of U.S power.
Obama’s plan reflects the idea that the dangers posed by the spread of nuclear arms can be curbed only if the United States leads in bolstering the global nonproliferation system, which experts say was badly eroded by the Bush policy, and by the Iranian, North Korean, Israeli, Indian and Pakistani nuclear programs.
There are growing concerns that the system faces further weakening, increasing the threat terrorists could obtain a bomb or bomb-making materials, as more countries invest in nuclear energy.
Thousands are expected to attend Obama’s speech in picturesque Hradcany Square in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.
The speech will build on a joint statement he issued Wednesday in London with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which they agreed to pursue deeper cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, beginning with a new treaty that would replace a key nuclear weapons accord that expires in December.
A senior administration official said that in Prague, Obama will argue that the United States and other nuclear powers “need to move away from reliance” on nuclear weapons and turn their attention to the threat of nuclear terrorism.
“He is going to focus on the growing and urgent danger of loose nukes,” said the senior official, who requested anonymity to preview parts of the speech.
Obama will be treading a fine line, however, espousing the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, but acknowledging that as long as such weapons exist, the United States will have to retain warheads.