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Obama and World Leaders Turn Focus to Nuclear Security
U.S. Will Defend NATO Members Under Threat, Obama Vows
(about 1 hour later)
THE HAGUE — President Obama shifted focus on Tuesday from the crisis in Ukraine and turned his attention to the issue that brought him to Europe, convening leaders from around the world to secure dangerous nuclear materials.
THE HAGUE — President Obama vowed on Tuesday that the United States would use its military to come to the defense of any NATO country that is threatened, sending a warning to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, about the consequences of further aggression along the border with Eastern Europe.
The subject of Russia’s aggressive takeover of the Crimean Peninsula will return to center stage on Wednesday when Mr. Obama meets with NATO and European Union officials in Brussels. Officials said the president planned to deliver a speech there designed to reassure European allies that the United States remains committed to their security.
“We will act in their defense against any threats,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in The Hague. “That’s what NATO is all about. When it comes to a potential military response, that is defined by NATO membership.”
But before those meetings, Mr. Obama sought to emphasize the need to prevent terrorists from obtaining the highly enriched uranium and plutonium that would allow them to create nuclear weapons or so-called dirty bombs. In a series of joint statements with other countries, the United States hailed efforts to eliminate the radioactive material or secure it against theft.
The president said the United States and other world powers rejected Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a region of Ukraine that voted to secede on March 16. But he acknowledged that military force would not be used to return that region to Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO.
The United States and the European Union pledged to work together to combat the trafficking of nuclear materials. Italy and the United States announced that they had agreed to remove from circulation 20 kilograms, or 44 pounds, of uranium and plutonium. The United States and Japan on Monday announced plans to remove or destroy hundreds of kilograms of nuclear material.
“There’s no expectation that they will be dislodged by force,” Mr. Obama said of the Russian forces who are in Crimea. He said the world was limited to trying to use legal and economic pressure against Russia. “It would be dishonest to suggest that there is a simple solution to resolving what has already taken place in Crimea,” he said.
Kenneth C. Brill, a former United States ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, praised the progress he said was made by various accords signed during the two-day summit meeting here. It is the third such global gathering since Mr. Obama issued a call in 2009 to work toward a world without nuclear weapons and to secure all nuclear material around the globe.
But Mr. Obama quickly added, “History has a funny way of moving in twists and turns, and not just in a straight line.”
These are “the world’s most dangerous materials,” Mr. Brill said. Progress made here and formalized under Dutch auspices should make volunteer states more accountable, he and other experts said.
He also said his plan to let bulk telephone data records remain in the hands of communications companies would allow the government to effectively combat terrorism while eliminating concerns that law enforcement could abuse the database to invade people’s privacy.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama met with President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to discuss the situation in Ukraine and efforts to secure nuclear materials.
A day after leading a meeting of the industrialized democratic nations known as the G-8 group until Monday, when members voted to oust Russia, Mr. Obama accused Mr. Putin of acting from a position of weakness in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Kazakhstan, in part because of its history of suffering fallout from the Semipalatinsk nuclear tests, has been a leader in international nonproliferation efforts, nuclear experts said.
“The fact that Russia felt compelled to go in militarily,” Mr. Obama said, “indicates less influence, not more.”
Mr. Nazarbayev, who has led the Central Asian republic since before the Soviet breakup and is an adroit player of East-West power politics, has good ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has signed up to join his Eurasian Union, which the Kremlin leader sees as a counterbalance to the European Union.
The president said Russia’s buildup of troops on its border with Ukraine appeared to be “intimidation,” while acknowledging that “Russia has a right legally to have its troops on its own soil.”
Ukraine would be crucial to that Eurasian grouping. With the acting Ukrainian government now turning to the West, Moscow has lost, for now at least, its ability to build a competing economic and political bloc.
But Mr. Obama rejected an assertion made during the 2012 presidential campaign by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, that Russia would be the “No. 1 geopolitical foe” for the United States in the years ahead. He said Russia was largely a threat to its neighbors, not to the United States.
A White House statement released after Mr. Obama’s meeting with Mr. Nazarbayev said nothing about Ukraine, concentrating instead on moves by Kazakhstan to enhance nuclear security.
He said he continued to be more concerned about “the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”
Mr. Obama last spoke with the Kazakh leader in a March 10 phone call in which he both emphasized the importance of territorial integrity and sovereignty — the principles the West says Russia has violated in Ukraine. Mr. Obama then “encouraged Kazakhstan to play an active role in finding a peaceful outcome for Ukraine.”
On the telephone records, Mr. Obama said the proposal he intended to submit to Congress “ensures that the government is not in possession of this bulk data.”
The website of the Kazakh newspaper AK Zhaik, reporting on Tuesday’s meeting, said that Mr. Nazarbayev had expressed sympathy for Mr. Putin’s efforts to “protect the rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine, as well as its security interests.” However, the newspaper also said that he sought a peaceful resolution in Ukraine.
He added, “I’m confident that it allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal with the dangers of a terrorist attack, and it does so in a way that deals with the concerns.”
The Russian actions in Ukraine have mostly overshadowed the nuclear summit meeting, but White House officials have said the president remains committed to highlighting the importance of securing nuclear materials.
But Miles Pomper of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., said that for all Mr. Obama’s efforts on the issue, the process relies too much on his personal leadership rather than institutional arrangements.
The next nuclear summit meeting is to be held in 2016 in Washington. After that, it is not certain that the gatherings will continue.
