Van Rompuy gets handshake in Washington

EU President Herman Van Rompuy on Monday joined leaders of nearly 50 countries invited by US President Barack Obama to an unprecedented 'nuclear summit' aimed at containing the threat of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. http://bit.ly/ciUJsA

The two-day gathering is the largest called by an American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt organised the 1945 meeting that created the United Nations, the US press reports.

According to the guest list, Europe was represented by Van Rompuy and a number of national leaders, including Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

The Washington summit is the culmination of a hectic week of nuclear diplomacy for Obama and comes a year after he laid out his vision of a world free of atomic weapons in Prague (see 'Background').

The US administration hopes that the summit will strike an agreement to secure the world's stockpiles of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium (HEU) essential ingredients in building nuclear weapons by 2013.

The BBC quotes Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former investigator at the CIA and the US Department of Energy, as saying that there are three headlines that keep Obama awake at night:

'Loose Pakistani nukes' falling into the hands of terrorists;
North Korea supplying terrorists with nuclear bombs, and;
Al-Qaeda launching a nuclear attack.
Ahead of the summit, the US president held a marathon series of bilateral meetings with the leaders of Kazakhstan, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, China, Jordan, Armenia and Malaysia.

"I feel very good at this stage on the degree of commitment and a sense of urgency that I have seen from the world leaders so far on this issue [] We think we can make enormous progress on this, and this then becomes part and parcel of the broader focus that we've had over the last several weeks," Obama was quoted as saying.

According to analysts, the summit would not address a new nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, because the issue is divisive.

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[ajvap]

@joshv89 He doesn't claim to be your president. He is the president of the European Council and that's exactly how he was introduced. He wasn't introduced as 'President of Europe' or something like that.

[luizziano]

@LORDMCHUGH He isn't representing you, he's representing the European Council. He has no real 'power', so you didn't nééd to vote for him. Voting for this type of presidency would be nonsense, and it would simply cost too much money. I don't understand why everyone is complaining about him, he's doing a great job. And stop comparing him to Obama please, it's like comparing apples to pears as we'd say in Belgium.

[Underthesun377]

Van Rompuy didn't want this job, because he knows what it's like being the 'boss' of the EU. He's a very down-to-earth man who doesn't care about power or big corporations. He's just an extremely smart guy who has been given powerful jobs during his entire career, just because he's so good doing them. I guess you don't know him at all and you don't know anything about his opinions. Representing the EU these days isn't a gift. If you want change, go complaining to the nations, not Van Rompuy.

[x2436ab]

Van Rompuy has no interest in, whatsoever, to represent the wishes of the PEOPLE in the EU..He is ONLY interested in representing the ELITE and the BIG corporations, aspecially the BIG corporations within the weapon and the banking industry because it is from them he gets his biggest bribes.

Van Rompuy is a true traitor, not giving a damn what the PEOPLE in the EU thinks or wants!

Fire that traitor and everyone of his 'followers' which is probably 90-95%+ of the members in the EU-parliament!

[roibasses]

Van Whoy?

[Lextjaefvel]

Van Rumpuy - just another unelected BILDERBERG Order Taker

[ajmf35029]

Obama is your president. You have a great man, although greatly opposed by nutter-right wingers.

Van Rumpuy is NOT our president. He is a loathsome idiot who we did not vote for, and most of us didn't even know we were going to get a president.

[luizziano]

@allan3141 The members of the Commission aren't elected by the people, that's right. But they are nominated by the member states, and then accepted or rejected by the Parliament, whose members àre democratically elected. And those decisions you speak of are first debated in that Parliament before they can affect you or me or any European citizen. If the UK wants to go out of the EU, that's your choice, you're not cooperating anyway. But I believe Europe's the future.

[allan3141]

@ajvap It has a flag. Collects tax money. Has a parliment. Makes laws. It is deciding at present whether or not to take military action in Libya! If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck.

[allan3141]

@luizziano rubbish he and the other unelected members of the commision are making decisions that affect me. I did not vote for him or any of them. The institution is not legitimate. The Uk wants out of the EU. "They" know it; so we were not given a referendum.