20100412
ALLAFRICA

The Obama administration praised South Africa and Kazakhstan as examples of nations that have given up their nuclear weapon capabilities and achieved greater security and stability as a result.

President Obama met separately with South African President Jacob Zuma and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on the eve of the April 12-13 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.

In remarks with Zuma April 11, Obama said South Africa "has special standing in being a moral leader" on the nuclear issue.

"South Africa is singular in having had a nuclear weapon program; had moved forward on it, and then decided this was not the right path; dismantled it; and has been a strong, effective leader in the international community around nonproliferation issues," the president said.

South Africa can help "guide other countries down a similar direction of nonproliferation," Obama said.

In an April 11 press briefing with members of the National Security Council (NSC), Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, described South Africa's 1989 decision to dismantle its nuclear weapons program as "one of the most important and dramatic nonproliferation developments that we've seen take place."

By choosing to meet its international nonproliferation obligations, the country "has found greater security and prosperity within the international community," Rhodes said.

Obama's meeting with Kazakh President Nazarbayev highlighted similar decisions by the Kazakh leader and his country to close its nuclear test site, remove all nuclear weapons and material from the country, and cooperate with the United States in destroying any remaining nuclear material.

Kazakhstan took the decision to close the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in 1991, soon after it gained independence from the former Soviet Union.

NSC official Laura Holgate said U.S.-Kazakh cooperation has continued with joint efforts to decommission a nuclear reactor and to manage the safe destruction of its remaining nuclear fuel. Holgate is the NSC's senior director for weapons of mass destruction terrorism and threat reduction.

"We're also cooperating at a different, smaller research reactor near the former capital of Almaty that uses highly enriched uranium," she said. "We're working to convert that to use low-enriched uranium that is not weapons-useable, and to destroy the highly enriched uranium that remains."

The NSC's Mike McFaul, who is senior director for Russia and the Caucasus, said the president praised Nazarbayev as "one of the model leaders in the world" on nonproliferation and nuclear safety. Kazakhstan is "an excellent example" of how a country can forgo nuclear weapons and achieve greater security and economic prosperity, McFaul said.

By "giving up nuclear weapons, they received security assurances from all the countries in the region, and that has helped to make Kazakhstan one of the most stable countries in the region," he said.

And because it gave up nuclear weapons, Kazakhstan went from a country that might have been isolated to one that is open to the international economy and is attracting foreign investment, McFaul said.

Nazarbayev, Zuma and more than 40 other heads of state are participating in the two-day Nuclear Security Summit, which aims at securing all of the world's nuclear material to prevent it from being seized or stolen by terrorist groups or other non-state actors.

"If there was ever a detonation in New York City, or London, or Johannesburg, the ramifications economically, politically, and from a security perspective would be devastating," President Obama said in his meeting with Zuma. "And we know that organizations like al Qaida are in the process of trying to secure a nuclear weapon -- a weapon of mass destruction that they have no compunction at using."

Many participating countries have already embraced the goal of agreeing upon a specific work plan and a time frame to secure nuclear material, he said.

"They're coming to this summit, not just talking about general statements of support but rather very specific approaches to how we can solve this profound international problem," Obama said.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)