Extremist ‘madmen’ must not be allowed to get nuclear material, Obama warns leaders at summit
Extremist “madmen” from the Islamic State group would not hesitate to launch a catastrophic nuclear attack, US President Barack Obama warned at a global summit in Washington on Friday.
Hoping to galvanise global action to prevent jihadists from getting hold of nuclear weapons or material for a “dirty bomb”, Obama painted an apocalyptic picture of the impact of a nuclear terror attack.
Obama, who is leaves office next January, was hosting a fourth and likely final leaders’ summit aimed at reducing the risk of a nuclear holocaust.
The first summit was held in Washington six years ago at Obama’s behest, when the young president, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize sketched out a vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
Today he stands as a president on his way out, trying to complete as much of his agenda as possible while Republican front runner Donald Trump garners attention with unorthodox calls for South Korea and Japan to be nuclear armed.
There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, they most certainly would use it to continue to kill as many innocent people as possible
Such utterances, Obama said, “tell us the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally”.
