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Washington, DC, August 29, 2009 – U.S. and South African senior
officials discussed a broad range of nonproliferation and disarmament
issues August 26 – 28 in Pretoria, South Africa. State Department
Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control Robert J. Einhorn
led the U.S. interagency delegation. The meeting followed President
Obama’s and President Zuma’s decision at the July 8-10 G-8 summit to
expand our bilateral dialogue on these issues.
South Africa will be an important partner in building international
consensus and momentum among nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states on
our shared nonproliferation and disarmament agenda. A key objective of
this week’s meetings was for the United States to learn more about South
Africa’s views on strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime
before, during, and after the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
Review Conference.
In his April 5, 2009, speech in Prague, President Obama outlined an
ambitious nonproliferation and disarmament agenda, including working
toward a world free of nuclear weapons—a goal that South Africa shares.
As the only state to have developed and then given up all its nuclear
weapons to join the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state, South Africa
bears unique credibility and perspective on these issues. Recognizing
this perspective and its regional and global leadership on these topics,
the United States seeks South Africa’s input as we refine our approaches
to making the Prague speech vision a reality. The United States looks
forward to expanded consultations and cooperation as we work together to
promote disarmament and reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. We
will also increase our efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, which
includes securing all vulnerable nuclear material and is the focus of
the President’s Nuclear Security Summit in March 2010. In lockstep with
these efforts, we will also intensify our cooperation to further all
countries’ efforts to meet their ever-growing energy needs.
We expect these talks to be the first of a series of consultations
between the United States and South Africa in the coming years to
advance our commonly shared nonproliferation, disarmament, and energy
security objectives.
Source: US Office of the Spokesman, August 28, 2009
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