Crackdown Sought on Nuclear Material

A proposed communiqué calls for leaders from more than 40 countries to endorse a global crackdown on the illicit trade of nuclear material at a summit in Washington next week.

The communiqué, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, calls for tougher criminal prosecution of traffickers, better accounting for weapons-grade nuclear materials and more international collaboration in such cases. The international community must “effectively prevent and respond to incidents of illicit nuclear trafficking,” the draft says.

The U.S.-led initiative comes as Washington has been pushing for tougher sanctions against Iran in connection with Tehran’s nuclear program. Though Iran isn’t officially on the agenda of next week’s meeting, officials said Tehran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program and the international effort to contain it have lent the meeting an additional sense of urgency.

An Iranian firm closely linked to Tehran’s nuclear program has allegedly acquired special hardware for enriching uranium, a key step toward making an atomic bomb, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, despite sanctions intended to keep such equipment out of Iran.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, the Obama administration unveiled a nuclear-weapons strategy that establishes new formal limits on their use, prompting criticism from both advocates of more ambitious curbs and conservatives who questioned the decision to alter decades of bipartisan consensus on how to deter enemy attacks.

President Barack Obama and his top military and diplomatic aides said the new 72-page Nuclear Posture Review moves the U.S. closer to Mr. Obama’s goal of eventually eliminating nuclear weaponry. But some arms-control specialists said the document was too timid, and fell short of their expectations by failing to adopt a no-first-use policy and to keep open the option of striking some non-nuclear targets, such as Iran and North Korea.

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, who has emerged as the leading Republican critic of Mr. Obama’s nuclear policies, said he was troubled by the decision to take several non-nuclear threats off the U.S.’s target list, an early salvo in what could become a partisan battle over Mr. Obama’s nuclear agenda in the coming months.

The new policy narrows the range of threats the Pentagon will seek to deter with nuclear weapons. Because of advances in missile defense and conventional weapons, the new policy states that the U.S. no longer will target most non-nuclear states, even those that threaten use of chemical and biological weapons.

The document stops short of declaring that deterring a nuclear attack is the “sole purpose” of the U.S. arsenal, however. The policy states that because there are some countries that have not lived up to their obligations under international nuclear treaties, the U.S. reserved the right to keep noncomplying countries targeted.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the carve-out was specifically aimed at Iran and North Korea, which are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but have been cited for violations or, in the case of North Korea, have threatened to withdraw from the pact.

Next week’s summit would hardly be the first international initiative aimed at curbing the illegal nuclear trade. Officials involved in the talks say the U.S.’s primary goal for the summit is to refocus global attention on proliferation amid concern that previous efforts to curtail the spread of atomic technology and material have fallen short.

A big concern is the threat posed by terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, which the U.S. and other countries worry could acquire nuclear materials for a bomb. Several terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, have attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction or to build conventional bombs that would blast out nuclear waste as shrapnel, according to Western intelligence officials.

Officials from the U.S. and other Western countries also cite developments in Iran, which they say has managed to secretly advance its nuclear weapons program, as evidence for the need for stricter enforcement. Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said Tuesday that the U.S. is concerned about preventing Iran from obtaining key nuclear parts.

“The prevention of nuclear trafficking is a key part of the U.S. non-proliferation strategy,” she said.

Leaders from more than 40 nations, including China and India, are expected to take part in next week’s summit. Mr. Obama first announced plans for a nuclear security summit last year.

In addition to the calls for tougher controls on the nuclear black market, leaders are expected to agree on a proposal urging countries to convert nuclear reactors powered by highly enriched fuel, which can be more easily repurposed for use in nuclear weapons than low-enriched uranium, into reactors using low-enriched fuel.

The proposed communiqué also reaffirms the “essential” role of the IAEA in policing compliance with existing international nuclear treaties and calls on states to cooperate in developing databases of incidents of suspected illicit trafficking.

In addition to the communiqué, leaders at the summit are expected to endorse a “work plan” that outlines more detailed actions that countries can take to reduce nuclear trafficking.