Extremist “madmen” from the Islamic State group would not hesitate to launch a catastrophic nuclear attack, US President Barack Obama warned at a global summit in Washington on Friday.
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At the closing news conference, Obama, a Democrat, made clear that the raucous Republican presidential race, particularly controversial comments by party front-runner Donald Trump, weighed on leaders’ discussions on the summit sidelines.
The Nuclear Security Summit, attended by more than 50 world leaders here, termed threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism as “one of the greatest challenges to global security” in the communique, which said the threat is “constantly evolving”.
Mr Obama said the required 102 countries had now ratified an amendment to an atomic security treaty that would tighten protections against nuclear theft and smuggling.
“This is a success of diplomacy that hopefully we will be able to copy in the future”, Obama said. The leaders adopted a joint statement, with the promotion of sharing information on terrorism using nuclear materials as its central pillar.
Asserting that Pakistan is “following a policy of minimum nuclear deterrence to preserve strategic stability in South Asia”, it said the deployment of “battlefield tactical nuclear weapons that Mr. Kerry refers to are Pakistan’s decision in light of the level of threat that it faces currently”.
The first summit was held in Washington six years ago at Obama’s behest, when the young president, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize sketched out a vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
In a characteristic power play, Russian President Vladimir Putin had pointedly boycotted the summit.
He said that “madmen” from terrorist groups should not be allowed to acquire nuclear material as they would use it to create humanitarian catastrophes. “… as [the] Islamic State is squeezed in Syria and Iraq, we can anticipate it lashing out elsewhere”, Mr. Obama said in his concluding remarks, before the screening.
In connection with simultaneous terrorist attacks that occurred late last month in Brussels, the group responsible for the attacks has reportedly recorded video images of the home of a high-ranking official of a nuclear facility in Belgium.
In a speech delivered at the NSS opening plenary here Friday, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged countries around the world to increase national input and expand worldwide cooperation so as to further firm up the global nuclear security architecture. Fissile materials like highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are necessary ingredients to make nuclear bombs.
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Obama took apart Trump’s positions point by point.
