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 yesterday. 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), the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and the United Nations.
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. 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.”
