(VEN) - Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung will lead a Vietnamese delegation to attend the Energy Security Summit in Washington DC, from April 12-14, 2010.
The summit is hosted under initiative of US President Barack Obama and will attract national leaders from 44 countries including Russia, China, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, India, Indonesia, and Thailand and some international organizations.
The summit is the first of its kind in nuclear energy security by international leaders. The objective is to promote international cooperation for nuclear energy security, avoid the illegal transfer and transport of nuclear materials and sensitive technology information, striving to turn bilateral agreements into multilateral cooperation in this field. The summit seeks to produce a joint statement by world leaders with their commitment to making the most of their efforts to ensure nuclear energy security, taking it as the key to development and expand the use of nuclear energy for peace.
In the Vietnamese side, the head of the Agency for Radioactive Security, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ngo Dat Nhan, said the target of the Vietnamese delegation in the summit was to actively partake in discussions, manifest the country's view-point of actively contributing to the joint efforts of the international community in avoiding the spread of nuclear weapons, striving for nuclear disarmament, promoting the use of nuclear energy for peace, security and development of nations; and making nuclear energy security the responsibility of each nation and the world community. Vietnam's consistent policies in this regard were evinced in a series of strategies and codes such as the strategy on the use of nuclear energy for peace until 2020 adopted on January 3, 2006; an overall plan for implementation of the strategy on the use of nuclear energy for peace until 2020 approved on July 23, 2007 and especially the Law on Nuclear Energy that came into effect from January 1, 2009. Also at the summit, Vietnam will display its commitment to ensuring security of nuclear and radioactive materials.
Major issues on the agenda include the threat of nuclear terrorism; national actions aiming at ensuring nuclear security; enhancing the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in ensuring nuclear security; and international actions for protecting nuclear materials.
The summit is expected to adopt a joint statement and an action plan. The action plan is compiled for implementation of the world leaders' joint statement in the summit. The two documents will note all existing papers concerning nuclear security in a comprehensive manner. Its major contents include: Encouraging the implementation of legal documents such as Resolution 1504 of the United Nations Security Council that fights against the spread of mass destruction weapons, an international convention avoiding nuclear terrorism actions, a convention on nuclear agent protection and a supplemental version to the convention; upholding multilateral cooperative mechanisms such as the global initiative avoiding nuclear terrorism and the G8 global partners; highlighting the importance of IAEA's surveillance system as well as the nuclear control and accounting system of nations and nuclear units; recommending observance of IAEA's instructions on nuclear security aiming at detecting, avoiding and confronting the stealing, destruction, illegal access, transfer, and use of nuclear materials as well as IAEA's nuclear energy support plan for capacity-building in member countries. As for use of nuclear energy, the two documents call for nations to shift into using low-enriched uranium (LEU) instead of high-enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear research reactors and ensuring security for firing HEU. Besides, the two documents stimulate involvement of the nuclear power industry and all related parties in ensuring nuclear security, information sharing and capacity-building in detecting, avoiding and coping with the trade of illegal nuclear materials./.
By Phuong Lan
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