PUKmedia    12-04-2010    10:59:35

President Obama met on Sunday with the leaders of two countries that gave up nuclear weapons and two that are building more, and he prepared for his nuclear security summit meeting by warning that Al Qaeda was still seeking materials to build an atomic bomb.

“The single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short-term, medium-term and long-term, would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Obama said. Al Qaeda, he said, is “trying to secure a nuclear weapon — a weapon of mass destruction that they have no compunction at using.”

Mr. Obama greeted the presidents of South Africa and Kazakhstan, Jacob Zuma and Nursultan Nazarbayev, in sessions meant to showcase countries that once possessed nuclear weapons and relinquished them. Mr. Obama has argued that the security of both countries improved thereafter.

Mr. Obama also held separate sessions at Blair House, the official guesthouse, with the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, which have taken a different path — nuclear buildup. White House officials would not disclose many details of the meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who upon leaving India talked about the country’s “impeccable” record of nuclear security.

Later in the day, meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan, Mr. Obama was described by aides as expressing “disappointment” that Pakistan was blocking negotiations over a multination treaty to halt the production of new weapons-grade nuclear material. Mr. Gilani, who under recent changes in Pakistan now has authority over its nuclear arsenal, heard Mr. Obama out, officials said, but did not change his position.

Even as Mr. Obama was emphasizing that the United States is reducing the size of its own nuclear arsenal as it promotes nonproliferation elsewhere, some of his top aides were on national television Sunday emphasizing America’s nuclear weapons strength. Their comments came in response to Republican accusations that Mr. Obama has weakened America’s nuclear deterrent by limiting the conditions under which nuclear weapons will be used and in signing a new arms reduction treaty with Russia.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on ABC’s “This Week,” said that the United States remains “stronger than anybody in the world, as we always have been, with more nuclear weapons than are needed many times over.”

-NY Times-