EUR: Obama calls for nuclear-free world, warns North Korea
04 Apr 2009 1:04 AM
STRASBOURG, France, April 3 DPA - US President Barack Obama says he'll push for a nuclear-free world, and has cautioned North Korea against firing a long-range rocket.
"Even with the Cold War over, the spread of nuclear weapons, or the theft of nuclear material, could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," Obama told an audience of several thousand young people at a town hall meeting at Strasbourg in France.
"This weekend in Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," he said ahead of an EU-US summit taking place on Sunday in the Czech capital.
Obama was speaking just hours before the start of a NATO summit in France and Germany.
Earlier, the US president also warned North Korea not to go ahead with its "provocative" plans to fire a long-range rocket.
"The response so far from the North Koreans has been not just unhelpful, but has resorted to the sort of language that has led to North Korea's isolation in the international community for a very long time," Obama said after talks in Strasbourg with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"They should stop the launch," Obama said.
Washington suspects Pyongyang is preparing to test a Taepodong-2 missile, which is theoretically capable of reaching Alaska and carrying a nuclear warhead, under the cover of a satellite launch. Its first test of such a missile in 2006 failed.
Latest reports out of South Korea suggested the launch could take place as soon as Saturday.
On Wednesday, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed during a meeting in London to draw up a new deal on nuclear disarmament.
The two leaders said they would seek a replacement to the current US-Russian strategic weapons reduction program (START), which expires at the end of 2009.
Under the existing START program, in place since 1994, the two countries have already agreed to a strategic arsenal of no more than 6,000 warheads and 1,600 carrier missiles.
In a joint statement issued in London, Obama and Medvedev emphasised a commitment to build on START, which had "completely fulfilled its intended purpose", as well as further scaling back nuclear stockpiles held by Russia and the US.
