US President Barack Obama and other world leaders converged here Sunday ahead of an international nuclear security summit set for Monday and Tuesday as North Korea moved a rocket to a northwestern site in preparation for a launch next month. Leaders who have already arrived here include Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. Hashim Yamani, President of King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renawable Energy, is heading the Kingdom's delegation to the summit. President Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged North Korea to immediately stop its launch plans, warning that they would deal sternly with any provocation. Obama said the move would jeopardize a deal in which the United States would ship food aid to the North in exchange for a nuclear freeze. “Bad behavior will not be rewarded,” Obama said in a joint news conference with Lee. “There had been a pattern, I think, for decades in which North Korea thought if they had acted provocatively, then somehow they would be bribed into ceasing and desisting acting provocatively.” Earlier, Obama made a symbolic visit to the tense, heavily armed border dividing the Koreas, six decades after the Korean War ended with a cease-fire that leaves the peninsula technically at war. The launch preparations come as North Koreans and new leader Kim Jong Un mark 100 days since the death of Kim's father, Kim Jong Il. In northwestern North Korea, the main body of a long-range rocket was transported to a building in the village of Tongchang-ri in North Phyongan province, South Korean Defense Ministry and Joint Chiefs of Staff officials said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department rules. For a president up for re-election, Obama's will be a rare Asia trip devoted to just one country, built around a nuclear security summit that carries his imprint. Obama held the first one in Washington two years ago. This one is considered a status check and a time for nations to offer new and tangible pledges, but no breakthroughs are expected. Campaign politics directed from and toward a US president typically cease when he is abroad, although Obama's posture toward threats to America will be scrutinized by his rivals. The timing comes as daily economic concerns, not foreign ones, are driving the concerns of American voters. Yet the setting does give Obama a few days to hold forth on the world stage while, back home, Republican presidential candidates keep battling each other. Halfway into an ambitious four-year effort to safeguard nuclear materials from terrorists, many nations have taken voluntary steps to corral material that could be used for terrorist weapons. But they have sidestepped larger questions about how to track all such material, measure compliance and enforce security.
