Google Back to Google News In Asia, Obama, Medvedev see nuclear pact progress

SINGAPORE - President Barack Obama from Sunday the United States and Russia would be a replacement treaty on reducing nuclear weapons ready for approval by year's end, an announcement is designed as an upbeat ending to a summit with Asian Pacific leaders.
While publishing progress with Russia on arms control - part of Obama's agenda to promote nuclear disarmament - the president and other leaders bowed to the obvious climate change. They have a compromise agreement for a 192-nation meeting next month in Copenhagen discussed, indirectly acknowledged that the meeting adopted a new global treaty to the heat-trapping carbon emissions that the planet is warming reduction would produce it.
Approaching the end of his two days in Singapore, Obama also attended a second summit with the leaders of the 10 southeast Asian countries where the ASEAN group. Obama was the first U.S. president to sit at the meetings, which included a senior leader of Burma - part of a shift in U.S. policy away from the isolation of the repressive Myanmar military government.
Afterward, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama had the meeting, Myanmar Gen Thein included Bollywood, that his government must release detained democracy leader length and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.
Obama, who is also directly with the government that brought, "Gibbs said.
While Myanmar ranks high among the nations that suppress human rights, a joint statement by the United States and ASEAN have made no mention of Suu Kyi.
The whirlwind of summitry is part of Obama's first presidential trip to the region. His emphasis on big issues like climate change, disarmament and the economic crisis is part of Obama's approach to persuade newly emerging powers like China - where he was headed later Sunday - to share in the burden of managing global challenges.
The change in emphasis has helped Obama move relationships to a more positive attention away from disputes over human rights and the Chinese military build up which has ties unsteadied. In Shanghai on Monday, Obama will address an audience of students from several universities and field questions from them and submissions to the U.S. Embassy's website.
Obama and the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Summit of the APEC nations announced good progress in negotiations on an updated pact in place of the START nuclear arms agreement, which expires on 5 December.
Assembly, gesturing, and leaning to his Russian colleague, Obama said the pair discussed a successor for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and describes "excellent progress over the past few months."
"I am convinced that if we work hard and with a sense of urgency, we will be able to do this," Obama said, adding technical problems remain.
Medvedev said he hoped negotiators would "finalize the text of the document by December.
Obama and Medvedev had agreed in April to reach a new nuclear arms reduction pact to replace and expand on the one by former president George HW Bush signed and the Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev.
During a July Top Moscow Obama and Medvedev also agreed to cut the number of nuclear warheads each nation has to travel between 1500 and 1675 within seven years.
American officials say the two nations have now agreed on the broad outlines of a new treaty, which, when Obama's travels to Europe, signed early in December in order to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
It is not clear yet if the same trip that Obama would use climate summit in Copenhagen to attend, given that any agreement on cutting greenhouse gases would only serve as an interim political document.
"There is an assessment by the authorities that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally binding agreement was between now and Copenhagen, which begins in 22 days of negotiations," said Michael Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.
The Prime Minister of Denmark, Loekke Lars Rasmussen, the UN-sponsored climate conference's chairman, flew overnight to Singapore for a proposal to move the aim of the meeting to a "politically binding" agreement, in the hope of breathing life into the struggling process.
A fully binding agreement would be a second meeting will be leaving next year in Mexico City, Froman said.
Obama supports the approach Cautioning the group not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, "Froman said.
An important bill dealing with energy and climate in the U.S. Senate, a national priority of Obama's, is bogged down with little hope of completing the following month. That would leave Obama little to show in Copenhagen.
During his Asia trip, which continues to China later Sunday, Obama also called for continued pressure on Iran and its nuclear program. Appear with Medvedev, Obama said: "We are now running out of time."
"Unfortunately, so far it seems Iran is not able to say yes" to the proposal on uranium reprocessing, Obama said.
Medvedev said further: "We are willing to work on and I hope that our joint work a positive result will be achieved. In the event we do not, other options remain on the table." He said further sanctions against Iran was possible if it does not open its nuclear program to inspections to prove it was not trying to build a bomb.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China - along with Germany have engaged Iran on its nuclear program, most recently with a deal for it to ship enriched uranium to Russia for further processing as fuel for an aging reactor that is used for medical treatment.
The United States and its allies believe Iran is using the nuclear program as a guise for building a bomb. Tehran says it only wants to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
Obama wrapped his official presentation in Singapore late Sunday afternoon by meeting with Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of the world's largest Muslim nation, and Obama's home as a boy. Obama said he was about the prospect of improved relations with Indonesia excited and repeated his plan to visit next year.
But he said the schedule would depend on his family, he wanted to plan a trip with "Michelle and the girls, giving them a glance at some of my old suit could take."
AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven and Associated Press writers Desmond Butler in Washington, and Vijay Joshi in Singapore contributed to this report.