PRAGUE (Reuters) - President Barack Obama set out his vision for ridding the world of nuclear arms on Sunday, declaring the United States ready to lead steps by all states with atomic weapons to slash their arsenals.
Delivering a speech given new urgency by North Korea's rocket launch hours earlier, Obama said the United States would go ahead with plans to build a missile defense shield in Europe as long as Iran posed a threat with its nuclear program.
On a visit to the Czech capital, once a focal point in the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, Obama pledged to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal, to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force and to seek tough penalties for those that broke rules on non-proliferation.
"The United States will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons," he told a cheering crowd of more than 20,000 in Hradčanské Square outside the medieval Prague Castle.
"To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and urge others to do the same," Obama said, adding: "We will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor."
Referring directly to North Korea, he said Pyongyang should be punished for breaking the rules with its rocket launch and called on it verifiably to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
Cold war resonance
In a speech which at times recalled Cold War-era trips by U.S. presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to once-divided Berlin, Obama hailed the Czechs' doomed 1968 attempt to halt the Soviet invasion in the "Prague Spring" and the bloodless Velvet Revolution that finally ended communism there in 1989.
With Poland, the Czech Republic is one of two sites in eastern Europe earmarked for a U.S. missile shield promoted under the Bush administration and condemned by Moscow as an act of aggression aimed against Russia.
Bush said the shield was necessary to counter threats from what he called rogue states such as Iran. The new administration has been less assertive in pushing the plan, insisting it would be reviewed for cost-effectiveness and viability.
Obama presented Iran - a U.S. foe he has sought to engage diplomatically - with a "clear choice" of halting its nuclear and ballistic missile activity or facing increased isolation.
"As long as the threat from Iran persists, we intend to go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven," he said in some of his clearest comments on the plan.
"This means that in no way does the missile defense project end now," Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said of a project his government backs but which is opposed by most Czechs suspicious of a foreign military presence on their soil.
Yes, we can
About 600 anti-shield protesters demonstrated close to the venue of the speech, with banners reading "Yes, we can ... say no to military bases," a play on Obama's election slogan.
Aides said Obama hoped setting out his vision for a nuclear-free world would lend credibility to Washington's efforts to resolve atomic disputes with countries such as Iran and North Korea.
Iran says it wants nuclear technology to generate electricity, not to use for weapons as the West suspects.
This is a shortened version of the Reuters report. You can read the whole report here.
