Obama Outlines Disarmament Plan

JONATHAN WEISMAN MARC CHAMPION

PRAGUE – Under a hazy spring sky, before a swelling Czech crowd, U.S. President Barack Obama called for an international effort to lock down nuclear weapons materials within four years, breaking new ground on arms control efforts he said would move the globe to nuclear disarmament.

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U.S. President Barack Obama said North Korea's rocket launch was a provocative act that violated United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Speaking just hours after a nuclear-armed North Korea launched a two-stage ballistic missile, the U.S. president took to the stage in Castle Square here, testifying "clearly and with conviction" to an audience of at least 20,000 of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

"We have to insist, 'Yes, we can,'" he said, reprising a battle theme recognizable to a crowd a continent away from his campaign victory.

Within recent weeks, the White House has had high-level contact with the nation of Kazakhstan, which approached the administration to volunteer as a host side for a proposed nuclear fuel bank, where countries that renounce nuclear weapons can turn for fuel for peaceful nuclear energy reactors, a senior administration official said. The White House is seriously considering the offer, and giving control of the bank to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a break from the Bush administration, which supported the bank but opposed IAEA control in a neutral country.

The president's pledged to secure nuclear weapons and material was backed up by a promised international summit in Washington to further the effort. At that summit, the president is likely to propose creating a new international agency, separate from the IAEA, to pursue the effort, another break from past U.S. policy, the senior official said.

It was the first public, set-piece address on the fifth day of his first major trip abroad, but the promise of renewed arms control efforts may have been overshadowed by the reality of North Korea's launch. Mr. Obama said he would consult with Japan, South Korea and other Asian neighbors before seeking sanctions at the United Nations Security Council, which was to convene in New York Sunday afternoon for an emergency session.

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President Barack Obama, U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and the Czech Republic's President Vaclav Klaus attended the welcoming ceremony at Prague Castle.

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something," the president told the crowd, calling the launch a provocative act the violated United Nations Security Council resolutions. "The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

But White House officials said the North Korean test failed to meet its objective. None of the Taepo Dong 2 missile's stages reached orbit, the U.S. military's Northern Command said, a necessary precondition to travel between continents. One stage fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan. Two others fell into the Pacific.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the launch itself was a provocation, regardless of its failure. And the president promised to use the Korean action to press his arms control agenda.

Specifically, Mr. Obama called for an international convention to draft a treaty abolishing the production of fissile materials that can be used to create nuclear weapons. An international "nuclear fuel bank" -- stocked in part by scrapped nuclear warheads -- could be accessed by nation's seeking to develop and sustain peaceful nuclear energy programs. That way, they would not have to develop their own nuclear enrichment programs.

Basing such a bank in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state and nuclear weapons test site, which still hosts Russian space launches, would be the clearest sign yet that the administration is willing to make compromises that bend toward Moscow. It could also raise eyebrows, since Kazakhstan's authoritarian government might not provide the democratic, neutral site envisioned by the IAEA.

Mr. Obama also called for new steps to secure existing nuclear materials and warheads, before they leach onto a black market where terrorists could acquire it. In a break from past efforts, a senior White House official said the new effort would move beyond a past focus on Russia to new countries where fissile material is lightly guarded.

Russia appears ready to be a genuine partner in the effort as well, a senior administration official said. At his private meeting with Mr. Obama on Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev brought up a new effort to strengthen United Security Council resolution 1540, which established legally binding security standards for nuclear facilities that have been loosely enforced.

Lamenting "the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," Mr. Obama said, "In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up."

He reiterated the pledge he made Wednesday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to conclude a new bilateral treaty reducing the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals below the 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads agreed on in 2002. The treaty is to be concluded by the end of the year, with progress assessed at a July summit in Moscow.

He will also "immediately and aggressively pursue" Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, concluded by President Clinton in 1996, then abandoned by President Bush after a Republican-controlled Senate voted it down. White House officials said arguments against the test ban have diminished in the 19 years since the last nuclear test. The international community has shown it can verify even small nuclear tests, like North Korea's. And the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories appear to be able to maintain the reliability of the U.S. arsenal without explosive testing.

"If we're not going to test, we might as well get the benefit of it," a senior administration official said. "Pass the treaty so it binds everyone else."

Arms control groups hailed the speech as a breakthrough that went well beyond the rhetoric of nuclear arms reduction.

"President Obama hits all the familiar nuclear nails, but used them to build a new framework for global nuclear disarmament," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and a veteran in the arms control world. "He is not merely rationalizing U.S. forces down to a smaller level that would be maintained indefinitely, as other president's have done."

North Korea's missile launch put new urgency into the arms control agenda, Mr. Obama said before a morning meeting with the Czech leadership.

But it also threatened to overshadow the message. The White House received confirmation just after 4:30 a.m. Prague time. Shortly afterwards, staff woke the president up for consultations with Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Gates, National Security Adviser James Jones and his NSC staff.

The Prague speech was billed as a sober, serious policy address, but the White House disregarded the advice of some in the Czech government and opened it to the public on a large square behind the castle that overlooks what Mr. Obama called "this golden city, both ancient and youthful."

Some in the crowd had traveled hundreds of kilometers to attend. Even locals had to get up at 5 a.m. to make it through clogged security checks and were munching on grilled sausages by 8 a.m.

"No, no, and no," said Martin Lipek, a 22-year-old transport student, asked if he would have gotten out of bed at dawn on a Sunday morning for George W. Bush, reflecting how much the missile defense issue and Iraq war divided an otherwise staunchly pro-American nation.

George Novotny, 49-year-old owner of a Prague computer business said he came because "I have my balloons," before blowing up a green balloon marked "Yes we can" on one side and "Stop US Radar Near Prague" on the other.

When former Mr. Bush visited Prague, Mr. Novotny got arrested protesting. This time he was "here to listen," and float his balloons, he said.

Rock music from the Obama campaign pulsated, while Czechs waved small American flags. A camera swept over the crowd on a boom that extended over the square, flanked by baroque government buildings. Mr. Obama ascended the stage with First Lady Michelle Obama to the symphonic strains of the Moldau, by Czech composer Bedric Smetna. Under a temperate April sky, he evoked the Prague Spring of 1968, when the city tried to rise up against communist oppression, and the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when the city finally and peacefully overcame communism.

A Jumbotron beaming his English speech in Czech was invisible to all but a few of the crowd, a fact that likely subdued the crowd.

The site was chosen carefully. Czechs have been deeply divided over the efforts by Mr. Bush to deploy elements of an anti-missile system in their country, a system Russia angrily opposes but which Washington insists is targeted as Teheran, not Moscow.

An applause rose up in only part of the crowd when Mr. Obama vowed to pursue the missile shield as long as Iran pursued its nuclear ambitions. Another part of the audience cheered when he suggested he could drop the effort if Iran is deemed no longer a threat.

The breadth of Mr. Obama's plans to tackle nuclear issues impressed many in the crowd and could make it easier to defend U.S. missile defense plans if he decides to go through with them. Some who believe the Czech Republic would become a target for attack if it hosted the radar system said they might now be willing to accept it.

"I really liked that he had a vision of how to deal with this nuclear problem, I don't mind if we need to be a part of that," said Lucie Vitamvasova, a 25-year-old bank analyst.

"It's a lot easier to say yes to Obama," said. Andrea Goldbergerova, a 20-year-old student from Prague. "He seems more human than Bush. I just hope he can do what he said."

White House aides said the Kremlin was one of the target audiences of the speech, but so was North Korea and Iran.

Ahead of a review conference next year of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Mr. Obama wants to take concrete steps to make good on the nuclear nations' side of the bargain in the treaty: In exchange for non-nuclear nations' promises to forgo nuclear weapons development, the nuclear club was supposed to work toward disarmament while aiding the spread of peaceful nuclear technology.

White House national security aides hope Mr. Obama's efforts will isolate Teheran and Pyongyang.

"We're trying to seize the moral high ground," said Gary Samore, White House coordinator for weapons of mass destruction, security and arms control.