Nuclear Weapons

President Obama will ask world leaders today to join him in confronting a range of vexing issues, including nuclear arms proliferation and climate change, and will appeal for the international cooperation he thinks will advance interests around the globe, aides said. In a morning address to the United Nations General Assembly, Obama will call for several specific commitments, including support for the major elements of a nonproliferation resolution he plans to introduce before the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.

In a sweeping call for international cooperation, President Obama this morning challenged world leaders to set aside "an almost reflexive anti-Americanism" and work together with him and other nations on common goals such as nuclear disarmament, climate change and Middle East peace. An anti-American sentiment has served as an "excuse for our collective inaction," Obama told members of the United Nations General Assembly, at a time when collaboration is more important than at any time in history.

Conservative critics of President Obama's foreign policy initiatives are having a tough week. On Thursday, Obama achieved a signature victory when the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved his resolution aimed at halting nuclear proliferation. His warm reception by the General Assembly -- some delegates were so awed by the American president that they couldn't resist snapping pictures during his Wednesday speech -- stood in sharp contrast to the welcome accorded George W. Bush, whose U.N. speeches were typically met with stony silence.

The United Nations Security Council approved a nuclear nonproliferation resolution this morning, granting President Obama an early, first step toward his ultimate goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. The vote was the result of weeks and months of negotiations, and arrived with Obama presiding over the meeting as the first American president to do so. Obama urged world leaders to make sure that international law is more than "an empty promise," and said he "harbors no illusions about the difficulty" of the task ahead.

President Obama has maintained that he would not wait forever for Iran to decide whether it will negotiate over its suspected nuclear weapons program. It appears that the wait is about over. As he met with world leaders in New York and Pittsburgh this week, Obama gave the clearest signals yet that he's giving up on one of his trademark campaign themes, engagement with Iran, in favor of pursuing tough economic sanctions. Obama says he still harbors hopes for next week's meeting between the Iranians and world powers, but he spent hours this week lobbying Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao at the United Nations to give up their long-standing resistance to sanctions.

The U.S. and its allies plan to demand that Iran provide "unfettered access" to scientists and information regarding an underground uranium enrichment plant suspected of being part of a secret nuclear weapons program, an Obama administration official said Saturday. A deadline for the access has not yet been determined, but Iran probably would have to comply within weeks, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The U.S. is working with five other nations -- France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany -- to press Iran for details after the disclosure that the Islamic Republic has been building the facility deep in a mountain on a military base near the city of Qom. President Obama announced the existence of the plant Friday at an international economic summit in Pittsburgh.

With tense international talks drawing near, Iran on Tuesday boldly reasserted its right to build nuclear installations, while fissures appeared in the coalition of nations seeking to steer the country's leadership away from its nuclear ambitions. Iran held fast to its hard-line position in the wake of revelations of a new underground nuclear site, but also offered a conciliatory gesture by saying it would set a timetable "soon" to admit international inspectors to the facility, near the holy city of Qom. The split image of confrontation and vague cooperation injected an added sense of drama to Thursday's nuclear talks in Geneva, leaving diplomats uncertain whether Iran will negotiate seriously with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

It's easy to see why President Obama is so eager to fly off to Copenhagen to boost Chicago's chances of winning the Olympic Games. After all, if there's one thing at which he's already shown himself to be a master, it's selling. The country, however, doesn't need a pitchman in chief -- Billy Mays in a bully pulpit. Eventually, selling is not enough, and it comes time to deliver. The stuttering success of the stimulus package has won the president some breathing room on the economy, but the administration needs to do something about job creation in the very near future; a recovery that pushes up stock prices and Wall Street bonuses but leaves more than one in 10 Americans out of work is no recovery at all. Similarly, on healthcare, Obama can let the legislative process unwind a bit further, but pretty soon he'll need to acknowledge that a bill that compels everyone to buy health insurance without simultaneously creating a public option to act as a ceiling on prices isn't reform -- it's a windfall for insurance companies.

U.S. officials, arriving in Geneva for multinational talks with Iran on its nuclear program, said Wednesday that the session may include a one-on-one discussion between Iranians and Americans, a rarity since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 ruptured ties between Washington and Tehran. A senior Obama administration official told reporters that today's scheduled day-long meeting involving the U.S., Iran, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany may also include individual talks between Iranians and representatives of the other countries.

The United States and other world powers said they made progress Thursday in high-level talks with Iran, taking fragile but potentially significant steps toward resolving the international showdown over Tehran's nuclear program. Iran, they say, agreed to admit international inspectors within weeks to a uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qom, whose existence was revealed by President Obama last week. And this weekend, the top nuclear official for the United Nations will visit Iran to discuss a tentative agreement to send low-enriched uranium from Tehran to Russia to be processed for medical use and returned.