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Medvedev to take part in Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on March 26-27

The summit delegates “will not speak about the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, March 23 (Itar-Tass) —— President Dmitry Medvedev will take part in the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on March 26-27, Presidential Aide Sergei Prikhodko said on Friday.

The summit delegates “will not speak about the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea; they will concentrate on physical and technical security and protection of nuclear power units and radioactive material,” he said.

The leaders of 53 states, among them the presidents of Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Finland, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan and China, the premiers of Canada, France, Japan, Poland and Spain, and the heads of four international organizations will attend the summit. “Russia does not plan to make global initiatives. We are coordinating our approaches with the other participants,” he said. “There are claims to certain countries in the sphere of nuclear sites’ security and physical protection.”

“The security of nuclear sites is our priority. We do not plan to curtail our atomic energy program despite the nuclear accidents, including the Japanese Fukushima NPP accident of last year,” Prikhodko said. The national administration set the goal of enlarging the share of nuclear power plants in electric power generation and building small nuclear power plants. “There are neither big nor small questions to Russia: we fulfill our commitments of disarmament and physical protection. Russia also continues to make financial contributions to international physical security efforts,” Prikhodko said, citing as an example the Obninsk educational center which annually trains hundreds of specialists.

Seoul will host the second Nuclear Security Summit. The first event of the sort was held in Washington DC in April 2010.

The summit will begin with a lunch of delegation heads, who will review physical security measures taken after the Washington summit. There will be two working meetings and a breakfast on March 27 dedicated to national measures and international cooperation in the strengthening of physical nuclear security and its link to technical nuclear security.

“The media will not be invited to the discussions,” Prikhodko said. “Physical nuclear security aims to prevent the abuse of nuclear and radioactive material and sites. Technical nuclear security implies the operation of nuclear sites, their design and management of nuclear and radioactive material.”