White House officials say upcoming summit seeks to blunt threat of nuclear terror

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White House: Summit to prevent nuclear terror

WASHINGTON — A senior White House official said Friday that a historic Washington summit will seek new ways to stop terror groups like al-Qaida from building and detonating nuclear weapons.

White House officials told reporters the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit, which begins Monday, will seek to strengthen international safeguards against the theft or purchase of bomb technology by criminals and terrorists.

President Barack Obama has described nuclear terror as the largest single threat to global security.

“We know that terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, are pursuing the materials to build a nuclear weapon and we know that they have the intent to use one,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “This of course would be a catastrophic danger to American national security and to global security, were they able to carry out that kind of attack.”

White House nonproliferation adviser Gary Samore said the two key materials that must be locked up are highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

“If we’re able to lock those down and deny them to non-state actors then we have essentially solved the risk of nuclar terrorism,” he said.

But controlling nuclear materials isn’t a simple matter.

During the summit the U.S. and Russia will announce that they have reached an agreement on a decade-old plan to destroy 34 tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, Samore said.

He said it has taken years for both sides to agree on details of the pact.

White House officials say the summit will be the largest of its kind since the United Nation’s conference in San Francisco in 1945.