[JURIST] Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende on Monday proposed the establishment of an international tribunal in the Netherlands to try countries suspected of supplying nuclear materials to terrorists. The tribunal would be set in The Hague, already home to several international judicial institutions, and would hold accountable nations that break international nuclear security treaties. A “nuclear court” would have to be established by a special treaty. According to Balkenende, US President Barack Obama reacted positively to the proposal during the Nuclear Security Summit currently being held in Washington, DC. The two-day, 47-nation international summit is intended to pursue a comprehensive nuclear security agenda while addressing concerns that terrorist organizations could obtain nuclear material.
Continuing to make progress to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the so-called New START treaty last week, pledging to reduce their countries’ nuclear warheads by about 30 percent. Reaction to the new treaty has been mixed. US Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Sunday said that Senate approval of the treaty is unlikely to happen this year. Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) also expressed reservations, while UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called it a “significant achievement.” The US State Department began negotiating the treaty with Russia in 2009. The treaty agreement, reached in February, is the first nuclear agreement between the two nations in nearly 20 years.