The Obama administration, led by National Security Advisor Jim Jones, was heavily involved in the Israeli government's decision to appoint an "independent public commission" to investigate the Gaza flotilla incident and pushed Israel to speed up the process in order to head off any attempts for increased pressure at the United Nations.

Over the last week, there were a flurry of high-level interactions between top administration officials and their various Israeli interlocutors. A State Department official told The Cable that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and that Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg, Special Envoy George Mitchell and others were working the phones as well. Barak also spoke with Vice President Joseph Biden, who was traveling in the region.

But in last couple of days, the final details were worked out between the White House and Prime Minister's office, specifically by Jones and Israeli national security advisor Uzi Arad, according to an Israeli official. The National Security Council was much more involved than the State Department, with NSC Director Dan Shapiro in Israel to help and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren playing a role as a go-between as well, the official said.

The message Obama officials delivered was twofold. First, they wanted to make sure Israel appointed international members to the commission who were credible. William David Trimble from Northern Ireland and Ken Watkin, a former judge advocate general of the Canadian Armed Forces, will be on it.

The other Obama message to the Israelis? Speed it up. They wanted Israel to get the commission members settled on and announced as much as a week before the Israelis were ready. The Israeli official said that the detailed and extensive consultations with the Obama people are why it took so long.

"Our sense was that they were hopeful this commission announcement would come speedily and get this issue off the agenda so we could put it behind us," the official said. "Now, nobody can complain that Israel hasn't established a committee with international representation."

The direct and pivotal involvement of Jones is telling because he is also the official widely suspected (but not confirmed) to have been the source of the reports that the White House was telling foreign leaders it planned to support a separate international investigation if one was initiated at the U.N.

That story, put out by Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and denied by the White House, caused significant angst inside the Israeli government and diplomatic sources said it could have been an attempt to put pressure on Israel to speed things up.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley spoke about Kristol's allegation Monday. He promised the U.S. would support the Israeli investigation but refused to forswear U.S. support of whatever U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon might propose in the coming weeks.

"We stand by Israel and we'll voice our strong views against any action that is one-sided or biased by any international organization," Crowley said. "I'm not aware that the secretary general has yet made any decisions on steps the UN might take. We'll listen to what the secretary general has in mind and make a judgment then."

That type of hedging is exactly what many Israel supporters, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), are concerned about.

"AIPAC calls on the Obama administration to act decisively at the United Nations and other international forums to block any action -- including alternative investigations supported by the Secretary General -- which would isolate Israel," the group said in a statement.

They also point to the White House's statement Sunday on the commission, which they see as tepid because it included a terse warning to Israel along with word of support.

"While Israel should be afforded the time to complete its process, we expect Israel's commission and military investigation will be carried out promptly. We also expect that, upon completion, its findings will be presented publicly and will be presented to the international community," the statement said.

Going forward, there is still a lot of concern among Israelis about the prominent role Jones is playing in the shaping of the administration's Israel policy. The conventional wisdom is that Jones, along with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, are the ones inside the administration pushing for a harder line vis-à-vis Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, while Biden, the NSC's Dennis Ross, and to an extent Special Envoy George Mitchell are said to advocate a position more sensitive to Netanyahu's own political situation.

Former Middle East Negotiator Aaron David Miller said that it's natural for the NSC, and therefore Jones, to manage U.S.-Israeli issues that involve the overall tone and "high politics" of the relationship, as opposed to Mitchell, who handles issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian talks.

"When it comes to the overall relationship, the NSC is in charge," Miller said, adding that top administration officials seem to be converging around the realization that public pressure on Netanyahu can only be so effective.

"Those divisions have somewhat surrendered to reality, because in the end to get anywhere you have to work with the Israeli government," he said.

The government of Turkey is not satisfied with Israel's commission and is pledging to do its own investigation. Crowley said that was Turkey's right. The Israeli official said Israel's commission was not crafted "in any way to appease Turkey."

North Korea announced today that it was breaking off diplomatic relations with the South, one day after South Korea imposed severe trade restrictions on Pyongyang in response to the March sinking of a South Korea ship, the Cheonan.

The news broke as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was getting ready to depart Beijing for Seoul, South Korea, where she is expected to back President Lee Myung-bak's demand that Pyongyang "pay a price" for its actions. Clinton's five-day visit to China for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue has been largely overshadowed by the crisis on the Korean peninsula, with Beijing calling for calm in the face of growing pressure from Washington and Seoul.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, calls are heating up for the Obama administration to take punitive measures like putting North Korea back on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But the Obama administration is clearly signaling it does not intend to do that any time soon. The calculation is that the listing, which administration officals see as having been overly politicized by George W. Bush's administration, is more trouble than it's worth.

"With respect to ... the state-sponsor of terrorism list, the United States will apply the law as the facts warrant," Clinton said in Beijing Monday. "The legislation, as you know, sets out specific criteria for the Secretary of State to base a determination... If the evidence warrants, the Department of State will take action."

What Clinton is saying here is that the original reasons that North Korea was put on the list, when they blew up half the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon in 1983 and then bombed Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987, are not enough to justify putting Pyongyang back on the list today. Nor are the other reasons that the State Department has included in reports as recently as 2007 good enough for relisting now, namely that North Korea still hasn't answered for 12 Japanese abductees and still harbors members of the Japanese Red Army.

In fact, that 2007 report evens says that "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987."

Whether you believe that or not, the sinking of the Cheonan falls outside that definition.

"I don't see how you can call this a terrorist act," said Michael Auslin, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "I think it's an act of war but it's not a terrorist act. Putting them back on there would just show that we really don't have any other options. I think it was a mistake to take them off, but I don't think this is how you put them back on."

Leading Asia experts lament that the process was reduced to a political negotiation at the very end of the Bush administration, when then North Korea negotiator Chris Hill agreed to delist Pyongyang in exchange for North Korean promises to keep alive the Six Party Talks on their nuclear program. Those promises have gone largely unfulfilled.

When the delisting actually happened in October 2008, the State Department stated that North Korea "had not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period and the provision by the government of assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future."

Many Asia experts support putting North Korea back on the list, but they don't see the Cheonan sinking as a justification for doing it.

"I actually think it makes perfect sense to relist North Korea; it just has nothing to do with the Cheonan incident," said L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, a northeast Asia focused think tank. "The incident just provides an opportunity to reevaluate the politically driven decision to delist them in the first place."

That decision was meant to cement progress made by the Bush administration as represented by a September 2005 declaration whereby North Korea promised to abandon all nuclear weapons programs and a February 2007 agreement on implementation.  Japan was so upset, based on their domestic imperative to keep the abductee issue alive, that then Prime Minister Taro Aso reportedly called Bush that morning to beg him not to do it.

But after being delisted, Pyongyang just waited out the Bush administration and then started a series of provocative actions that eventually led to the Obama administration basically abandoning attempts to engage North Korea altogether.

That's not to say there aren't arguments to be made that North Korea is indeed still currently a state sponsor of terror. For example, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Pyongyang this month of funneling weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas through Burma, an allegation that has not been confirmed by the U.S. side.

But the Obama administration isn't making those arguments. That job is left to congressmen such as Gary Ackerman, D-NY, and Sam Brownback, R-KS. "Through the sales of ballistic missiles, artillery rockets and conventional arms to Hamas and Hezbollah, State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations, Pyongyang is fueling two additional potentially disastrous confrontations," Ackerman said.

Overall, the making of the listing into a political football is exactly the reason that the Obama administration doesn't want to wade into those waters again.

"They saw the way this was handled in the Bush administration and they don't want to go there," said Flake. "It's a lot easier to do then to undo. This is a tool that should not be overly politicized, if we want to put more sanctions on North Korea, we can."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stunned the world Tuesday morning when she testified that the United States had reached an agreement with other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on a draft resolution leveling new sanctions against Iran. But there's one body that the administration still does not have an Iran sanctions agreement with: the U.S. Congress.

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers pledged to swiftly reconcile the two versions of the Iran sanctions legislation, one sponsored by Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-CT, and another led by House Foreign Affairs Committee head Howard Berman, D-CA.

"We hope it will move out of conference this week and be on the floor next week," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, said Tuesday.

"International sanctions make a lot more sense than unilateral ... But we're not going to retreat from the unilateral sanctions effort," said Dodd.

Inside the conference process, there's a lot going on. Conferees and non-conferees alike have been holding meetings on the legislation both at the staff and member level. Dodd and Berman have been engaged with the administration to work on the fixes the Obama team wants to see in the bill.

The drive to complete the bill quickly, ahead of the U.N. Security Council process, is bipartisan and bicameral. Republicans don't believe the U.N. language will be tough enough and are resisting administration efforts to have Congress wait for the U.N. track to play out. Democrats don't want to be pegged as weak on national security, and are cautiously trying to accommodate the administration's request for a delay.

But leading Republicans are growing impatient.

"I hope that the Democrats and the administration would move forward with that as quickly as possible. They clearly have been stalling for a long period of time," Senate Armed Services committee ranking member John McCain, R-AZ, told The Cable.

Read on

Add the Obama administration's WMD czar Gary Samore to the growing list of top officials who believe that Middle East peace is a necessary precursor to solving wider regional problems, including the drive to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Samore tied the peace process to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, currently ongoing in New York, by saying that one of the key signs of success would be if "at least some progress" can be made toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

"We recognize and I frankly think everybody recognizes that in the absence of a comprehensive and endurable peace settlement, achieving the zone... is just not likely to be the outcome any time soon."

He then took the argument one step further and said, "The Obama administration is working very hard to try to push the peace process forward and it seems to me that's an essential element to making progress in any of these zones... It's hard to imagine how you could have an arms control regime in the Middle East without having peace and diplomatic recognition... it's a precursor to negotiations."

It's longstanding U.S. policy that Israel should eventually join the NPT, but it's also longstanding U.S. policy not to push Israel to change its stance of neither confirming nor denying its estimated stockpile of 100-plus nuclear weapons. Samore said he does not personally support Israel changing its policy of ambiguity and that no such discussions were taking place that he was aware of.

He also sought to set clear expectations for what might come out of the four-week conference, namely that the administration was not expecting all of the conference members to sign onto any agreement together.

"We believe that if a strong majority of countries support an outcome that pledges support for the treaty and supports practical steps for all of the three pillars plus language on the Middle East, that would be a successful outcome... even if that document is not accepted by the conference as a whole."

Samore also defended the U.S.-Russia civilian nuclear agreement, which the White House sent over to Congress Tuesday. Some lawmakers see the agreement as an undeserved reward to Russia, before that country has publicly committed to signing onto a strong Iran sanctions resolution at the UN.

He said the deal, known as the 123 agreement, won't come into force until later this year and he predicted a UN sanctions resolution would materialize well before then. And he doubted that Russia would go through with the delivery of the S-300 air defense system to Iran, which could also provoke opposition to the deal.

"We've made it very clear to the Russians that would have a very significant impact on bilateral relations and the Russians understand that the consequences would be very severe... I'd be surprised if those transfers take place," said Samore, declining to specify exactly what those consequences would be.

He also headed off another potential concern about the deal by saying, "As long as I've been in this job, there's been no concern about Russian entities providing nuclear assistance to Iran."

Samore said the START treaty with Russia will probably be submitted to Congress this week.

Missile defense is as much of a diplomatic initiative as a military one. For the Poles, they see missile defense cooperation with the United States as a great way to build defense ties, bolster their credentials within NATO, and maybe even hedge against their traditional eastern foe, Russia.

What Poland doesn't see is itself as a target of the missile threat from Iran, the country the nascent U.S. missile shield is supposedly designed to thwart.

"If the mullahs have a target list we believe we are quite low on it," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with Foreign Policy during his trip to Washington Thursday.

Sikorski is in town to meet with a host of officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and National Security Advisor James L. Jones. He also attended the Atlantic Council gala Wednesday night featuring Bono.

When George W. Bush's administration announced its plans to deploy missile defense interceptors in Poland, the system was advertised as needed to counter Iranian missiles headed toward the United States or Europe. The problem was, Bush's plan was designed to counter long-range missiles and actually had little chance of hitting a missile headed from Iran to Europe.

The Obama administration came in and changed the plan, replacing the interceptors with a "phased adaptive approach" that will use smaller, more mobile systems to counter short and medium-range missiles. They advertised that as better suited to protect Europe.

But Sikorski admitted that Poland's real interest in the system is to be an active player in the new emerging security infrastructure in Europe, which includes NATO's endorsement of missile defense.

"Our part of Europe has so far very few NATO installations," he said. "This is the game that seems to be the next project, so we decided to get involved."

Sikorski also commented on the botched rollout of the new missile defense plan by the Obama administration. Back in September, senior U.S. officials scrambled to brief allies after news of the plan was leaked from the European side ahead of the White House's schedule. The unfortunate result was that the plan was announced on the day of the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland.

Poland didn't intend to antagonize Russia by upgrading its ties to NATO and the United States.

"We were willing to give the U.S. a chunk of our territory for this facility, but we weren't particularly looking forward to paying the price with worse relations with Russia," Sikorski said. "The Bush administration had told us, ‘We will fix it with the Russians, we will persuade them that this is no threat to them, don't worry.' And the problem appeared when the Russians appeared to be unpersuaded."

Overall, Poland is satisfied by the level of attention it receives from the Obama administration, despite the perception in some foreign capitals that the White House spends its limited foreign-policy attention span dealing more with problem countries, like Iran, than it does with allies.

"We are not in the business of vying for attention," he said. "We recognize that the U.S. has some serious problems: financial, domestic, and we feel to be fortunate not to be one of those problem areas around the world that need urgent attention."

For Sikorski's thoughts on Poland's recent tragedy and the Gordon Brown immigration controversy, read Joshua Keating's post on FP's Passport blog here.

Only one day after the close of President Obama's nuclear summit, Congress is demanding the administration refocus the nuclear discussion on Iran's nuclear program and is threatening to move sanctions legislation sooner rather than later.

Congress has been sitting on two Iran sanctions bills for most of this year, having passed them through both chambers but not yet convening a conference session to resolve the two versions. Lawmakers have been giving the administration time to work the U.N. track, while also lamenting that the expected deadline for getting a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran keeps slipping.

The pressure to take action may well increase after today's congressional testimony, in which Defense Intelligence Agency head Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. warned that Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb within a year. Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright was quick to clarify that Iran wouldn't have the capability to actually construct that bomb until three to five years' time.

Burgess also gave some details in his written remarks about Iran's capabilities that weren't previously well known in public.

"DIA assesses that, with sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States," he wrote. "Iran displayed its next-generation SLV, the Simorgh, in February 2010. The Simorgh is much larger than the Safir and shows progress in booster design that could be applicable to an ICBM design."

(The relatively less revealing testimony of Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, who is in charge of America's contribution to the P5+1 process, can be found here.)

President Obama appears to feel the same sense of urgency. When he met Chinese President Hu Jintao at the summit, our sources report, he pressed Hu for some progress on U.N. sanctions by the end of April.

In response, the Chinese reaffirmed their willingness to participate in sanctions negotiations without making any concrete pledges. Although this was portrayed as a significant shift in some reports, the truth is that Chinese intentions are still unclear, as is the date by which the U.N. might take action.

On May 3, the U.N. begins the once-every-five-years Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. It's unlikely the Security Council would tackle the Iran issue in the middle of that conference, risking a political fight in the midst of an already-complex set of negotiations -- and that NPT review lasts until May 28. So if the Obama administration can't it done in April, the sanctions will have to wait until June.

Speaking about the issue at the press conference closing the summit Tuesday, Obama promised to press for sanctions but said, "I'm not going to speculate beyond that in terms of where we are."

Congress, however, wants to the administration to know that any delay will bring further pressure from Capitol Hill.

"We urge you to join with those allies who are prepared for action to immediately impose crippling sanctions on Iran," reads a letter signed by more than 360 House lawmakers that will be released later today. "Only such action on our part offers the prospect of persuading Tehran to turn away from its dangerous course."

A nearly identical Senate letter is also in the works and has at least 75 signatures right now, our Hill sources report.

At 3 p.m. today, bipartisan House leaders will hold a press conference to push for action on Iran sanctions. Speaking will be Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-VA, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-IL, and Rep. Mike Pence, R-IN. Our Hill sources say that the press conference was rescheduled specifically to enable Hoyer to attend.

The Senate has already appointed conferees for the Iran sanctions bill, but the House has not. People on the Senate side continue to believe that House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, D-CA, is holding up on appointing conferees to stall the conference as a favor to the administration, but Berman's office denies that.

The string of small deliverables coming out of the Nuclear Security Summit continues. These announcements, which were largely planned in advance but are being rolled out throughout the event are what American officials have taken to calling "house gifts" because they are seen as offerings by visiting dignitaries who want to get in good with their host.

"Maybe if you didn't bring anything this time, Obama won't invite you to the next one," one U.S. delegate joked.

And there are quite a few. We already knew about the Chilean and Ukrainian announcements that they would give up their last stores of highly enriched uranium. Ukraine also agreed to switch its reactor to use low-enriched uranium instead.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signed a deal to destroy large amounts of weapons grade plutonium today. Now, the Russians have announced they will shut down the plutonium plant in Zheleznogorsk, a once-secret city in Siberia. (They actually agreed to do that two years ago, but nice to know they will actually follow through.)

And Canada announced today that the country will give up a lot of its nuclear material, while Mexico announced today that it will convert it research reactors from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium.

All of this allowed Obama to announce in his speech Tuesday afternoon, "We are not just making pledges -- we are making real progress."

"The summit is a clever device for generating momentum," Joshua Pollack, a consultant to the U.S. government and a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog, told The Nelson Report, an insider Washington newsletter. "A lot of this stuff languishes because it costs money. But if everyone is expected to show up every couple of years and to be ashamed if they come empty-handed, well, it helps."

The final communiqué is below:

Read on

There are so many side meetings at the Nuclear Security Summit today, it's hard to keep track. Each country is managing a more than full schedule of appointments and making changes to those schedules on a constant basis.

Sometimes meetings run overtime and someone gets insulted. Such was the case today with the scheduled meeting between President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates.

Apparently, Abdullah's meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy ran long, leaving Zuma and his considerable entourage waiting in the hallway outside the meeting rooms in the first floor of the convention center.

Most of the credentialed media sits in a gigantic media hub far away from the meeting rooms where the real action takes place. But your humble Cable guy is parked right outside the doors of the meeting rooms (to the chagrin of many delegations) and witnessed the scuffle between Zuma's people and the UAE information minister.

"You can't just keep him standing here in the corridor," Zuma's aide told the UAE representative. "It's not done."

The UAE guy (pictured above right) asked Zuma to wait just one more minute. But when the Signapore delegation arrived for its meeting with Abdullah, which was scheduled after Zuma's, the South Africa delegation turned around and walked away, in quite a huff.

The UAE information minister didn't seem all that bothered and Abdullah's meeting with the Singaporeans went forward.

In another example of small accomplishments being rolled out during this week's nuclear summit, the United States and Russia are planning a ceremony to mark the update of a plutonium disposal agreement that was originally agreed to 10 years ago.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will sign an "amendment" to what's known as the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Disposition Agreement Tuesday on the side of President Obama's ongoing Nuclear Security Summit.

The original agreement was signed toward the end of Bill Clinton's administration in 2000 by then Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Both sides agreed to destroy 34 metric tons of plutonium. But the agreement never went into force due to disputes about the international funding assistance Russia said it needed for implementation.

The agreement "is very significant in the sense that over a period of a decade or so it will remove very large quantities of weapons-useable materials, and also it's an agreement that's been long stalled," the National Security Council's Gary Samore said on an April 9 conference call. "It was really President Obama's focus on this issue and the reset of his relationship with Russia that has finally been able to finalize this agreement."

The United States will spend $400 million to transform the Russian plutonium involved under the deal, nuclear expert Matthew Bunn told the Irish Times.  

"This signing represents a major and essential step toward enabling full implementation of our two countries' obligation to safely and transparently dispose of such excess weapon-grade plutonium, enough material for several thousand nuclear weapons," the State Department said in a statement.

Ukraine's new President Viktor Yanukovych scored a coveted one-on-one meeting with President Obama Monday on the margins of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, the White House announced.

That makes 10 bilateral meetings out of 46  countries attending (47 including the United States). Of those 47, 38 are represented by their heads of state or heads of government.

For the full roster of who is getting a meeting with Obama, read this.

And look here for a schedule of the summit's events beginning tomorrow.

The White House also announced the names of all the delegations heads, including those from the European Union and the United Nations, after the break.

Read on

The 47-nation nuclear summit in Washington doesn't start until next week, but the unofficial festivities begin tonight in Washington.

Only hours after touching down from President Obama's trip to Prague to sign the new START treaty, the State Department will be hosting a dinner event in Foggy Bottom for the "sherpas" from the various delegations and some other officials who took the opportunity to show up a couple of days early.

Attending tonight's dinner from the U.S. side are Under Secretary Ellen Tauscher, National Security Council senior director Gary Samore, and "threat reductions" coordinator Amb. Bonnie Jenkins.

Who are the "sherpas," you ask?

"‘Sherpa' is a term borrowed from the from the world of mountaineering, where the sherpas are the people that lead the way to the summit and make sure that it's safe for the important people who are in the climbing team," said Samore, who is the official sherpa for the U.S. delegation, "The sherpas are responsible for making sure everybody reaches the summit safely and leading the way. And if they don't, then they fall off the mountaintop first."

There have been three meetings of the sherpas so far as well as several meetings of the "sous-sherpas,' the deputies to the sherpas, who really delve into the nitty-gritty details of the summit.

Samore and the NSC's Ben Rhodes briefed reporters Friday on the official parts of the summit. They were clear to define the 47-nation meeting as having a limited and specific focus.

"The nuclear security summit is focused on a very specific issue of securing nuclear materials and cooperating to prevent nuclear smuggling, in order to reduce as much as possible the threat that terrorist groups or criminal gangs get their hands on nuclear materials that can be used for nuclear weapons," Samore said.

 "That really focuses on separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Those are the two materials that can be used for nuclear explosives," Samore said. "And if we're able to lock those down and deny them to non-state actors, then we have essentially solved the risk of nuclear terrorism."

President Obama will start the formal festivities Sunday by holding a series of meetings at Blair House, the historic home across Lafayette Park from the White House. The first meeting goes to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, followed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan. Obama will also see Nigeria's acting President Goodluck Jonathan, who just happens to be in town.

On Monday, Obama will move the show over the Washington Convention Center, where the summit will take place, and hold more one-on-ones. The first Monday meeting will be with King Abdullah II of Jordan, followed by Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia, President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia, and President Hu Jintao of China, in that order. Obama's meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will be on Tuesday.

After he finished his meetings on Monday, Obama will host a welcoming ceremony at 5 p.m. and great each delegation leader personally. Of the 47 countries attending, 38 are being represented at the head of state or head of government level, the other nine at the vice president, deputy prime minister, or foreign or defense minister level.

On Monday night Obama will host a working dinner focused on "the threat and the magnitude of the threat," according to Samore. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, IAEA head Yukiya Amano, and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy will be also there. "So we'll have 50 at the table," Samore said.

The plenary sessions begin Tuesday morning. The first session will focus on what specific actions countries can take to secure loose nuclear material and combat smuggling within their borders.

"The primary responsibility for securing nuclear materials, whether in the civil or the military sector, rests with individual countries," Samore said, adding he expects some countries to make announcements, such as converting nuclear reactors away from using highly enriched uranium to lower levels of enrichment.

Tuesday's lunch session will focus on the IAEA, whose job it is to set guidelines for the countries and provide technical assistance. Senators such as Richard Lugar, R-IN, are expected to join.

The afternoon plenary will focus on international and cooperative steps countries can take regarding nuclear security. Then Obama will hold a press conference to release the "communiqué" that will be issued. Then a closing reception.

If you're not a delegation leader and are feeling left out, don't worry. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Energy Secretary Stephen Chu will be hosting meals for those interlocutors who are in town but not invited to the big table.

Although the conference is not until next week, the language of the communiqué seems close to final.

"There'll be a high-level communiqué from the leaders, which will recognize that nuclear terrorism is a serious threat, which will endorse President Obama's effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials over a four-year period, and will pledge, in a general way, steps that countries can take on both a national and an international level in order to strengthen nuclear security and prevent terrorists or criminal groups from getting access to materials for nuclear weapons," Samore said.

Leading Republican critics of the Obama administration are holding their fire ahead of a big week in the world of nuclear weapons, with a series of landmark documents expected to drop in the coming days.

Several government sources said they anticipate the White House will release the unclassified portion of what's called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) on Tuesday, Apr. 6, just two days before President Obama is set to sign the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia in Prague. The timing of both events is meant to show successes for the president's ambitious nuclear agenda before a 44-nation nuclear security summit convenes in Washington on April 12.

The substance of the documents shows the White House's effort to please its supporters in the arms-control community while not going so far in its changes to U.S. nuclear policy as to provoke leading conservatives who might want to pick fights over the issues.

"The White House is getting very adept at satisfying both constituencies," said Tom Donnelly, a fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute and someone who is normally not shy about criticizing the Obama administration, "Conservatives are taking more of a hopeful, wait and see attitude than you might expect."

Donnelly sees this middle-of-the-road approach as the result of internal compromises within the administration, chiefly between the White House and the Pentagon led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"Gates is fighting the good fight, so conservative want to support him too. We don't want to undermine the ‘moderate regime elements,'" Donnelly said. He added that Obama's choices also show he's "not going to spend a lot of political capital on the arms-control agenda."

Some influential conservatives do seem to be searching for a way to criticize START and the NPR, as liberal bloggers associated with the arms-control community have been quick to point out. Leading GOP senators like Jon Kyl, R-AZ, who have been vocal on the issues in the past, are waiting to see actual text of the documents before weighing in, aides say.

An administration official close to the issue said that conservatives are now contending that the reductions of nuclear weapons in the new nuclear treaty are so modest that the Obama administration is actually exaggerating its impact on nuclear reductions. If that's their point, the official said, then it will be tough to argue during ratification that the cuts undermine national security.

Another administration official described both the new START agreement and the NPR as "modest steps in the right direction."

Here are some of the examples of how the new nuclear agreements represent Obama's drive to change the direction of U.S. nuclear policy, but not too much:

• On declaratory policy, the NPR is expected to say that the "primary" or "principal" or "fundamental" purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter or respond to a nuclear attack. That's not as daring as saying that's the "sole purpose" of nukes (as arms-control advocates want) but is much more clear than the complete ambiguity hawks would have liked to preserve.
• On the decision that under new START, each bomber will be counted as "one" deployed nuclear weapon, that's also a middle-of-the-road solution. Defenders of the bomber fleet fear that counting bombers at all will lead to getting rid of them in favor of missiles and subs, which are more effective in an emergency anyway. Arms-control advocates feel that since bombers can actually carry over a dozen nukes, the counting rule could allow both sides to keep arsenals above the agreed limits.
• On nuclear modernization, the administration really threaded the needle here. Gates is well known to have supported what's called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a program Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher has adamantly opposed. So the NPR is expected to back up the president's budget, which provides lots of stuff related to "stockpile modernization" and a "life extension" program. When put together, these items can mollify GOP concerns about the aging stockpile while not actually committing to building a whole new warhead.
• On missile defense, new START will contain an acknowledgement about the relationship between offensive and defensive systems, but won't contain any firm restraints on U.S. missile defense deployments that conservatives could sink their teeth into. Expect the NPR to follow suit.

Congressional sources said they haven't yet been told whether or not they will get advance briefings on the NPR, as their members are still out of town on recess. The NPR release date could slip because classification and clearance details are still not complete, they said.

Ellen Tauscher, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, got to do a victory lap today before the State Department press corps after months of grueling, painstaking negotiations with her Russian counterparts over the details of a new arms-control treaty that has become the Obama administration's first signature achievement in foreign policy.

And she made some news, announcing that the administration now expects to release its nuclear posture review in mid-April, around the time of the upcoming Nuclear Security Summit, which is aimed at combating the smuggling and potential use by terrorists of nuclear materials.

On the new arms-control treaty, the successor to the START agreement that expired in December, she said the administration's intention is to "submit the treaty in the late spring and to seek ratification by the end of the year."

That could prove optimistic, given the negative signals key Republican senators are sending as well as the logistical hurdles involved in pushing the treaty through during what's likely to be a heated midterm election season.

Asked about what some see as the new treaty's linkage to missile defense, which some GOP lawmakers have warned would make them unlikely to support the document, Tauscher insisted, "[T]here is no limit or constraint on what the United States can do with its missile defense systems."

"There is no linkage," she said later, but acknowledged that the Russian and U.S. sides might issue nonbinding "unilateral statements" explaining their respective positions on missile defense.

Some components of the treaty will become public "later this month," Tauscher said, after which wonks and Hill staffers will pour over the text and weigh in with their critiques and questions.

Tauscher also pointed to a major conference in May to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the Obama administration has made the centerpiece of its efforts to show that the United States is meeting its international obligations.

"As we head toward the NPT Review Conference in May, the new START treaty demonstrates that the United States and Russia are abiding by the rules of the NPT," Tauscher said. "We’re doing our part to revitalize the Nonproliferation Treaty."

The State Department is being extremely cagey about how it views the prospect of a civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan, which multiple reports say the Pakistani delegation is likely to propose this week in Washington. But the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Not so much.

When you think about it, the State Department's position makes perfect sense. Why throw cold water on the idea only one day before the brand-new U.S.-Pakistan strategic dialogue? Even though the practicalities of giving explicit nuclear assistance to Pakistan are extremely complicated, to say nothing of the politics -- giving that country's proliferation risks, ties to extremists, and failure to punish one-man nuclear arms merchant A.Q. Khan -- it doesn't hurt to let them dream, right?

"I'm sure that that's going to be raised and we're going to be considering it, but I can't prejudge or preempt what the outcome of our discussions will be," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Pakistan's Express TV Group in a Monday interview. She was quick to point out that a similar deal with India "was the result of many, many years of strategic dialogue."

At Tuesday's State Department press conference, spokesman P.J. Crowley was equal parts polite and vague when questioned about a nuclear deal.

"As far as I know, we have not been talking to Pakistan about a civilian nuclear deal," he said. "If Pakistan brings it up during the course of the meetings in the next two days, we'll be happy to listen."

OK, so the administration is open to listening to Pakistan's desire for a deal within the context of the strategic dialogue. And the Pakistanis made it clear in their 56-page prep document that they want such a deal.

Any objections?

Actually, yes.

On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are still smarting from the last deal they made with Pakistan (when Pakistan complained about the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers are giving them) and still fighting over who gets to spend those billions, the prospect of a sweeping new nuclear deal with Pakistan seems too far-fetched to even discuss right now.

"I don't think it's on the table right now considering all over the other issues we have to confront," Senate Foreign Relations chairman John Kerry, D-MA, told The Cable. "There are countless things that they would have to do in order to achieve it. If they're willing to do all those things, we'll see."

Kerry emphasized that he believed a nuclear deal was not "directly" part of the strategic dialogue this week.

"There are a lot of things that come first before that. It's really premature," he went on. "It's appropriate as something for them to aspire to and have as a goal out there, but I don't think it's realistic in the near term."

His words were echoed by his Republican counterpart Richard Lugar, D-IN, who told The Cable he believes the idea of a nuclear deal should be delinked from the strategic dialogue.

"I think it's premature. It's not likely to be part of the agenda at this time," he said.

Lugar said he totally understands Pakistan's desire for energy cooperation and even gets why the country would sign a gas pipeline deal with Iran, which could certainly irk the United States as it pursues petroleum sanctions against that very regime.

"Everybody is desperate for resources and that has superseded a number of other considerations," Lugar said.

Kerry and Lugar each met separately Tuesday morning with Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was in Washington ahead of the State Department talks.