Obama said to plan push for nuclear disarmament

By SHAUN WATERMAN, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- The Obama administration is planning a series of "game changing" moves on the issue of global nuclear disarmament, members of an international commission said at the weekend.

"I think it's fair to say that we are pushing at a reasonably open door on all these issues," Gareth Evans of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament told reporters Sunday after meetings in Washington with senior U.S. officials, in which he outlined five priority issues the new administration should address to reduce the nuclear threat.

But some observers suggested the commission needs to broaden its focus.

"Everything we heard … was extremely encouraging, and it's extremely important in global terms, because in this, as in frankly so many other areas, U.S. leadership is absolutely critical and … has been somewhat missing over the last eight years," said Evans, former foreign minister of Australia and co-chair of the commission -- an international body established by the Australian and Japanese governments to lead a global debate on cutting nuclear arsenals and to work to ensure the success of the next round of talks on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 2010.

Evans and the commission's other co-chair, former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, national security adviser Gen. James Jones, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and the chairmen of several key congressional committees, including Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"I got a very, very positive impression of serious commitment from President Obama to really do some game-changing things in this area," Evans added in an interview with The Australian newspaper.

The White House National Security Council spokesman's office declined to respond directly to Evans' comments, but a senior administration official told UPI that the issues the commission had raised were "important issues, priority issues. They're under review and we look forward to engaging (with them) early and in depth."

The five issues that the commissioners called on the United States to make "particular priorities in terms of new action or renewed action," as Evans put it, were:

-- Getting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified, "if that can possibly be managed. We understand the political difficulties";

-- "Revitalizing the negotiations on a fissile material cutoff treaty," an international agreement to ban the production of new fissile material for nuclear weapons;

-- Successfully concluding a deal with Russia on the "continuation or replacement or extension" of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, "involving further deep reductions in strategic weapons";

-- Starting "serious, wide-ranging strategic dialogues" with both Russia and China on other issues, especially the controversial U.S. ballistic missile defense program; and

-- "Visible changes in U.S. nuclear doctrine" to rule out the first use of nuclear weapons.

Evans called these "very, very important steps … in changing the psychological landscape internationally and reinvigorating the momentum for both disarmament and non-proliferation."

Henry Sokolski, the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, told UPI the commission was "pushing very hard on issues where national governments are already focused like a laser beam. They should be putting a spotlight on things that national governments are not paying so much attention to. … That is where they can add value."

As an example, Sokolski cited the spread of nuclear power and "the question of how there can be a growth in the number of states with large nuclear reactors without a growth in the numbers of nuclear (weapons) ready states."

"They have done great work in lifting the carpet on the growing nuclear capabilities of Pakistan, India and China and the threats that poses," he continued. "We need to see more detail as to what might be done to counter those threats."

The commission, he concluded, was "still a work in progress."