WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joseph Biden has been put in charge of the administration's nuclear nonproliferation agenda, including President Obama's goal of securing vulnerable nuclear material around the world over the next four years, and efforts to convince Congress to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which would ban new nuclear explosions.
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Steinberg said Biden will shepherd the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty through Congress and push other countries to follow the US example by ratifying it. The administration would also work to remove obstacles that have blocked negotiations for more than a decade on a treaty that would prevent the further production of bomb-making fuel.
He said the administration would also work to make more rigorous, intrusive UN inspections of nuclear facilities mandatory.
He also said that the Obama administration intended to beef up Bush administration efforts to stop nuclear terrorism, such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, a largely ad hoc team of countries that interdicted ships believed to be smuggling dual-use nuclear materials. The adminstration would also work with Russia to negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the time the current agreement expires in December, he said.
Steinberg suggested that current efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear material in the former Soviet Union will be expanded to cover the entire world.
"More needs to be done on an urgent basis" to lock down nuclear materials around the world that terrorists might be able to get their hands on, he said. "The job must be completed."
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/04/biden_put_in_ch.html
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