Robin Carnahan: “In January of this year, I traveled, with eight of my colleagues, to meet with the leaders of Pakistan, Turkey…”

“In January of this year, I traveled, with eight of my colleagues, to meet with the leaders of Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, and several countries of the former Soviet Union. We were impressed with their level of commitment to the war against terrorism, and to making the world safe from weapons of mass destruction. We are all in this struggle against terrorism together. The only way to lock up all nuclear and radiological material is for friends and allies to work together and share the burden. We will spend several billions of dollars this year to improve our homeland security, and rightly so. But we also must recognize that we are only as safe as the weakest link in the chain-link fence guarding some nuclear material in far away country. I fully support President Bush's call to action, when he said late last year, with Russian President Putin by his side, that 'Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.' I hope my colleagues will join me as well in supporting this effort.”