Between February 2nd and 4th, the Global Zero campaign convened a conference in Paris, France, bringing together more than two hundred world and student leaders. The purpose of the summit was to discuss strategy to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. The summit came in the lead-up to U.S. President Barack Obama’s planned April summit on nuclear security and the May Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.
The Obama Administration is fully committed to pursuing a world without nuclear weapons. President Obama, speaking in Prague last April, declared the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century to be fundamental to international security and world peace. He then outlined a series of steps the U.S. will follow towards a world without nuclear weapons.
"President Obama set forth an ambitious agenda in his speech in Prague last year,” said U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher at the Global Zero Summit.
"We’re at the end game of negotiating a new arms reduction treaty with Russia. . . . The Obama administration also plans to release its Nuclear Posture Review in the early spring, which will reduce role and number of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy."
In addition to the April Summit on Nuclear Security and the May Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the Obama administration is working to start negotiations, in the Conference on Disarmament, on a treaty to stop fissile material production for use in nuclear weapons, so that we don’t add to global weapons stockpiles of highly enriched uranium or weapons grade plutonium, said Under Secretary Tauscher at the Global Zero Summit.
[But], she continued, "As President Obama said in his statement to you . . . . 'this is just a start.' We have a long journey ahead of us and it’s a journey that won’t be easy, but . . . . I believe that we can get there."
