U.S. names nonproliferation envoy, focus on Russia

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has appointed U.S. Ambassador Jackie Wolcott as special envoy for nuclear nonproliferation with the job of implementing a nuclear energy deal with Russia, the State Department said on Friday.

Wolcott previously served as U.S. alternate representative at the United Nations in New York and was a permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

"In this capacity, Ambassador Wolcott will work with counterparts in other countries to develop international cooperation to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime," the State Department said of Wolcott's new role.

One of the main jobs in her new post will be to help implement a nuclear energy and nonproliferation declaration initialed by U.S. President George W. Bush and outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin last July after talks in Kennebunkport, Maine.

The two leaders pledged to expand nuclear energy cooperation and make nuclear power available to other states and reduce their own strategic nuclear weapons to the lowest possible levels.

"The declaration reflects a shared vision of support for expansion of the use of nuclear energy worldwide in a way that reduces the risk of nuclear proliferation," added the statement announcing Wolcott's new job.

The agreement listed 10 ways to fulfill their pledge of broader cooperation with other countries, including how to deal with spent nuclear fuel, provide a steady supply of fuel, and ensure financing for the project.

"Those are the three key ones. A lot of work has gone into developing those aspects of the project," Wolcott said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

She said Russia had also designated a special envoy to deal with the issue and they had met in Vienna last week and were preparing for more talks next month.

"We will be working to see how we can make this a practical and concrete project," she said. "My job is to take it to the next step where we are dealing with (nuclear fuel) supplier states and recipient countries," she added.

The goal was to ensure that countries using nuclear fuel did it the "right way" and did not expand the fuel cycle to producing nuclear weapons.

Wolcott will not handle the North Korea nuclear file, which will still be dealt with by senior State Department official Chris Hill while Iran's nuclear dossier will be the responsibility of incoming Undersecretary of State, William Burns.

In their bid to prevent states like North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the United States and some other nuclear weapons states have been accused of a two-tiered system in which some states are allowed by international law to have atomic weapons and other states are denied that right.

(Reporting by Sue Pleming; Editing by Eric Walsh)