Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
1/15/2016
Russia will not participate in the upcoming and final Nuclear Security Summit due to the event’s “drastically altered” concept of international nuclear security cooperation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said this week. The summit, to be held in Washington, D.C., on March 31, will bring together international partners to discuss nuclear terrorism prevention and offer country commitments to securing nuclear materials and facilities.
Zakharova said that despite significant progress in the past, “the political agenda of these summits . . . has already been depleted. We don’t see any objectively looming breakthrough solutions that would require the involvement of heads of state and government” on nuclear security. She said the summit organizers “drastically altered the event’s concept” by suggesting certain guidelines be issued for international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Zakharova was referring to several action plans that are being developed to guide the work of five prominent international organizations sustaining the summit process: the IAEA, the United Nations, Interpol, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.
These guidelines “would become an attempt to impose the opinion of a limited group of states on the above-mentioned international organizations and initiatives in circumvention of their own political decision-making mechanisms,” Zakharova said. “We consider the creation of a precedent for outside interference in the planning of the work of international organizations . . . to be unacceptable.” The IAEA, she added, should coordinate nuclear security efforts for the international community.
However, a source familiar with the summit process said the action plans are being developed by consensus and that there are no “instructions” being forced upon any participants. Once developed, the action plans would move on to the international organizations for review and adoption, the source said, adding that “if you want to influence the process, you need to be a participant.”
The inaugural event held in 2010 brought together 47 countries and three international organizations, which then increased to 53 countries and four international organizations at subsequent summits. Participants signed commitments based on action plans that outlined nuclear security priorities. These plans have been cooperatively developed by international experts and prepared in time for consideration at the next summit.
Russia participated in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 Nuclear Security Summit events and “consistently advocates efforts to strengthen nuclear security and physical protection of nuclear facilities and nuclear material,” Zakharova noted. According to the White House, the 2016 summit will “highlight steps that can be taken together to minimize the use of highly-enriched uranium, secure vulnerable materials, counter nuclear smuggling and deter, detect, and disrupt attempts at nuclear terrorism.”
