Toespraak Rutte bij de opening van de Nuclear Security Summit 2014

Toespraak | 24-03-2014

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to the Netherlands, and welcome to The Hague, international city of peace and justice.

As you may know, the Peace Palace, which celebrated its centenary a few months ago, is only a short walk from this convention centre. Over the past hundred years the Peace Palace has become the symbol of efforts to create a stable world order by means of international cooperation. And that is exactly what is driving our efforts to make this third Nuclear Security Summit a success. All our discussions today and tomorrow will focus on one question: how to prevent nuclear terrorism?Or to be more precise: how can we make sure that nuclear materials won't end up in the hands of terrorists and that nuclear material is used more efficiently and stored more securely.

President Obama, you are personally responsible for getting this issue on the international agenda. The first Nuclear Security Summit in 2010, and the Washington Work Plan that it produced, still guide our efforts today. You laid the foundations, and so the world is in your debt.

President Park, two years ago your country hosted the second NSS, where we noted the progress we had made and raised our ambitions. And with success, because looking back on the past two years, we can see that real progress has been made. Not only have diplomatic efforts moved forward and documents been adopted, but there have also been quantifiable results. For example, since the process began the number of countries with more than a kilogram of usable highly enriched uranium has fallen substantially. This shows that we set off in the right direction four years ago in Washington, and that the summit in Seoul was also productive.

But we cannot rest on our laurels. We have to raise our ambitions again. We have to aim even higher here in The Hague. Because even as we speak, there are still almost 2,000 tonnes of weapons-usable nuclear material in circulation worldwide. And its security has to be our constant concern.

We know how little material is needed to make a crude nuclear bomb. We know that the technologies  required to make such a bomb are spreading. And we know - especially since 9/11 - that unscrupulous terrorists will not hesitate to use any weapon they can get their hands on. So the need to take steps to prevent nuclear terrorism is growing more urgent, not less.

The task we took on four years ago is not an easy one. But perhaps working for a safe, stable world is never easy. As Dag Hammarskjöld once said, 'The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.' And he was right. There is no magic formula we can use to free the world once and for all from the menace of nuclear terrorism.
And sitting back and doing nothing is not an option. But we are making progress, step by step.

There are three main goals we need to stay focused on at this summit and afterwards.

• First, we simply need to keep working to reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world. So it's good that here we are considering once more how dangerous material can be converted into something useful and less dangerous, and how reactors can be adapted to run on nuclear material that is safe, or at least safer.
• Second, we need a stronger security culture for nuclear material - a subject that was also on the agenda in Washington and Seoul. I am glad that in the next two days we will continue to discuss the proper division of tasks between government, regulators and the nuclear industry. Governments of course bear the ultimate responsibility. But the companies and research centres that work with nuclear materials are the first line of defence. They are almost always glad to share responsibility for nuclear security, and generally do an excellent job. While we are meeting here in The Hague, in Amsterdam the third Nuclear Industry Summit is taking place. Tomorrow the chair of that summit will be here to present its conclusions.
• Our third and final chief goal is to bolster the international nuclear security architecture. The coordinating role played by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the system of peer reviews are of course crucial in this regard. And so is making sure that the amended Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material enters rapidly into force.

Ladies and gentlemen,

A great deal of advance work has been done in the run-up to this Nuclear Security Summit. Today and tomorrow we will hone our common objectives and set our course for the years ahead. The long-running debate on improving the security of nuclear material has been like running a marathon. Every now and then we make a dash forwards. This time we are making a dash in The Hague. We will make another in 2016 at the next summit in the US - on our way to embed nuclear security firmly in national, regional and global institutions and procedures.

Your presence here today underscores once more your countries' political commitment to this goal. This should give us confidence that we will succeed. The task we took on in 2010 demands resolve, and perhaps more patience than we would like. But in the words of Nelson Mandela, whose statue stands outside, close by: 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' Let us press on in that conviction - today, tomorrow and in the days that follow - towards our goal of a safer world.

Thank you so much.