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U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar issued the following statement on presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s remarks on nuclear security on Tuesday: “McCain articulated a change of course for the United States on arms control and nonproliferation. I am pleased that Senator McCain would make achieving these arms control goals a priority. Senator McCain has affirmed his intent to work with Congress and the international community to aggressively address the existential threats posed by nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and materials. He states that direct dialogue with Russia and China must focus on a treaty-based strategy, with strong, legally-binding verification measures, to continue to reduce nuclear arsenals around the world. He correctly identifies the expansion of the Nunn-Lugar Program as critical to U.S. arms control efforts. Equally important he cites the need to improve the abilities of the International Atomic Energy Agency to detect illegal weapons programs, strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and construct a nuclear fuel bank to address the spread of dangerous enrichment and reprocessing technologies. The determined pursuit of these goals by the next President would yield vital national security benefits for the United States.” Lugar is shown here with former Sen. Sam Nunn (left) of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and U.S. Ambassador William Burns (center) in a meeting with Russian Federation Foreign Minister Lavrov (second from right) at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow last August. Nunn is being mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee for Sen. Barack Obama. In an HPI Interview in May, Obama said he is commited to the Nunn-Lugar program. "It will be a top priority. It will be something I care deeply, deeply about," Obama explained. "We can defeat terrorists who are equipped conventionally. The devastation they could do with weapons of mass destruction would be unimaginable and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can do in that scenario." (HPI Photo by Brian A. Howey)
Tags: Sam Nunn, Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Dick Lugar, Sen. John McCain
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This entry was written by and posted on May 28, 2008 at 9:18 am and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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