Pretoria - The two-day Nuclear Security Summit currently underway must push individual countries to outline their specific steps to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, a security expect says.
Johan Burger, a senior researcher in the crime and justice programme at the Institute for Security Studies, told BuaNews that the summit needs to produce concrete deadlines, working groups and follow up meetings to measure progress of the resolutions reached.
He said the leaders must pledge to toughen prosecution of traffickers, improve accounting for weapons-grade nuclear material and better protect vulnerable stocks.
Burger's comments comes as President Barack Obama opened the historic summit attended by 47 countries aimed at reaching an accord on how to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorists' reach.
Also attending is President Jacob Zuma, whose country gave up its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 1993 making it the first and only country to start abandoning a weapons programme voluntarily.
South Africa has been hailed by Obama for its leadership in this regard.
"South Africa has special standing in being a moral leader on this issue, and I wanted to publicly compliment President Zuma, (and) his administration, for the leadership they have shown and looking forward for the possibility of them helping to guide other countries down a similar direction of non proliferation," said Obama praising SA.
Burger said South Africa can use this commendation to its advantage during the talks by urging the leaders to take example to dismantle their nuclear programmes - a view that was also shared by Zuma.
In an interview with the SABC ahead of the meeting, Zuma said he would use the summit to push international cooperation to ensure safety of nuclear materials and facilities, as well as the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Zuma questioned why nations should possess nuclear arms in the first place.
Others have already labelled the summit as a sham because two nuclear powers namely North Korea and Iran where not invited while another major nuclear power Israel had declined to attend.
However, Burger's view is that their non-attendance will not compromise any decision reached at the summit.
He said individual country's nuclear ambitions and their refusal to uphold international responsibilities required a strong and unified international response from the leaders attending the summit.
Leaders at the summit are today expected to get down to work in crafting an agreement that will create specific timelines for securing all loose nuclear material around the globe.
