WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama met leaders of 46 countries including President Arroyo on Monday to begin discussions on ways to secure vulnerable nuclear material around the world to prevent terrorists from getting weapons-useable fissile material.
Obama held a working dinner with the heads of delegation to forge a consensus view about the nature of the threat and what needs to be done to confront it, White House spokesmen said.
Mrs. Arroyo arrived at Andrews Air Force base around 5 p.m. and had to rush directly to the Washington Convention Center for the dinner scheduled at 6:30 p.m. She will formalize the country’s position at the two-day Nuclear Security Summit.
Obama greeted the world leaders one after the other as they lined up to be acknowledged at the reception beamed live by television all over the world. About a thousand media people watched the reception line from a separate room with giant projectors.
Arroyo’s turn at the welcome platform almost coincided with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, with whom Obama signed last week a new US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that gave more significance to the Nuclear Security Summit.
Press Secretary Crispulo Icban Jr. said Mrs. Arroyo had conveyed to both Obama and Medvedev her congratulations for the successful signing of the START agreement.
Just before the start of the working dinner, Ukraine announced a landmark decision that it would get rid of all its stockpile of highly enriched uranium by the time of the next summit in 2012.
Obama told reporters that by the end of the summit on Tuesday “we’re going to see some very specific, concrete actions that each nation is taking that will make the world a little bit safer.”
On the sidelines of the summit, Obama had bilateral talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Mohammed Najib Abdul Razak of Malaysia and the leaders of Ukraine, Armenia and Jordan.
On Sunday he talked separately with the heads of state of India, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Pakistan.
Obama sees nuclear terrorism as the most immediate and extreme threat to global security and has called for enhanced international cooperation to safeguard vulnerable nuclear material, break up black markets, detect and intercept materials in transit, and use financial tools to disrupt illicit trade in nuclear materials and technologies.
John Brennan, Obama’s advisor on counterterrorism and homeland security, at a press briefing said “there has been indisputable evidence that dozens of terrorist groups have actively sought some type of weapon of mass effect.”
He said al-Qaeda has been engaged in an effort to acquire a nuclear weapon for over 15 years and its interest remains strong today.
The White House, in a statement, said the summit was necessary to galvanize collective action to thwart the ability of terrorists to “acquire a nuclear weapon and use one in one of our cities or any city around the world.” – With Paolo Romero