WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's nuclear summit has paid early dividends: China's agreement to work with the US on possible sanctions against Iran and Ukraine's decision to rid itself of nuclear bomb-making materials. Obama opened the global security summit Monday night after two days of meetings with selected presidents and prime ministers of the 47 countries assembled to recharge efforts to keep nuclear material out of terrorist hands. It ends Tuesday with a joint declaration to guide future work toward locking away and cleansing the globe of materials still too easily accessible to terrorists. China's incremental move toward US ambitions to sanction Iran and Ukraine's plans get rid of highly enriched uranium put some wind in Obama's sails as he presses global leaders to join him in locking down all nuclear materials within four years. Obama's meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao was the last of the summit warm-up sessions before the US leader sat down with his guests at a working dinner. After the Hu meeting, White House national security aide Jeff Bader said Iran was a major topic of discussion at the 90-minute session. "They're prepared to work with us," Bader said, interpreting that willingness as "another sign of international unity on this issue." Obama has been pressing the case that a fourth round of sanctions are needed to persuade Iran to alter its perceived course toward a nuclear weapons capability. China, while historically averse to tough sanctions and uneasy about potential damage to its trade relationship with Tehran, may indeed be coming on board with Obama. He already has the robust backing of Great Britain, France and Germany. Russia, too, has shown a willingness to join the sanctions effort, which would give Obama the required clean sweep of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. But when pressed on whether China had committed to anything specific on the sanctions front, Bader was less direct. "We are going to be - " we've started to work that and we're going to be working on that in the coming days - " coming days and weeks," he said. Obama wants agreement on sanctions before summer. The Ukrainians, who gave a major boost to arms control in 1994 when they agreed to surrender the nuclear weapons they inherited in the collapse of the Soviet Union, agreed to get rid of their weapons-grade fuel by 2012. Some details are yet to be worked out, including how and where the nuclear fuel will be disposed of, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. The material could be sent to the US or Russia, but Gibbs declined to specify the amount, other than to say it was enough to make several nuclear weapons.
