Good morning. It is an honor to be here with all of you today.

My thanks to Governor Crist and Mayor Diaz for joining us this morning, and to all those who organized this conference.

I also want to welcome Assistant Secretary John Rood and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak from the Kazakhstan conference. We appreciate your joining us, especially given the time difference.

We are here to discuss one of the most dangerous and deadly threats we face: nuclear terrorism. Few threats fall into the same class in terms of sheer devastation, damage, and loss. Few strike such fear in the hearts of the public. And few threats are so appealing to terrorists around the world, for the same reasons.

It has been said that the September 11th attacks were a “failure of imagination.” We cannot fail to imagine the consequences of a nuclear terrorist attack. Nor can we fail to imagine that there are those for whom such an event is the end game.

Prevention must be our end game. Should there be a nuclear attack anywhere in the world, it would mean in some sense that we have failed in our mission. That is why we are here this week.

This morning, I want to talk about the threat of nuclear terrorism. I want to touch on our collective efforts in the United States to keep our citizens safe. And I want to discuss what we in the international community must do to contain this threat.