Obama, Putin find agreement on nuclear weapons via The Washington Times

Agreement on a policy toward Syria isn’t likely, but President Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, did find common ground on reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

After a meeting Monday evening at this week’s G-8 Summit in Northern Ireland, the two men announced that they would sign a new nuclear security agreement to replace a 1992 deal that expired Monday.

The issue of nuclear proliferation is taking a clear backseat at this week’s talks to the ongoing Syrian civil war and how the global community will intervene. But for Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin, the agreement offers a chance to shine the spotlight on an area where the U.S. and Russia can work together, rather than where they sharply disagree.

The bilateral deal represents a renewed commitment to secure vulnerable nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, and the White House described it as “a new framework for cooperative threat reduction.”