Seoul: US President Barack Obama on Sunday said
that all highly enriched uranium had been removed from
Ukraine, hailing it as an important step toward curbing the
threat of nuclear terrorism.
Obama made the announcement on the eve of a nuclear
security summit in Seoul gathering leaders and top officials
from 53 nations to look at ways of locking up fissile material
that could be used to build thousands of terrorist bombs.
"Just today we saw another important step forward. We
learned that the Ukraine has completed the removal of highly
enriched uranium from its territory," Obama told a news
conference in the South Korean capital.
"I believe it is a preview of the kind of progress we are
going to see over the next two days in confronting one of the
most urgent challenges to global security -- the security of
the world`s nuclear weapons and preventing nuclear terrorism."
This week`s gathering in Seoul is a follow-up to an
inaugural summit that Obama hosted in Washington two years
ago.
Ukraine pledged at that summit to remove its entire stock
of highly enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear
bombs, and the process of moving it to Russia for secure
storage is now complete.
To replace the stock in civilian atomic energy, Ukraine
was sent a small amount of low enriched uranium unsuitable for
the manufacture of nuclear weapons, according to the
government in Kiev. (AFP)
PTI
