The second Nuclear Security Summit, in Seoul, produced a "modest but important" step forward in efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, a group of international nuclear security experts said Tuesday.

The Fissile Materials Working Group (FMWG), however, stressed that member states should take bolder action to carry out the communique and commitments they agreed to at the two-day summit.

"Several key steps should be taken prior to the next Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in 2014. States should institutionalize binding, comprehensive standards for security that emphasize performance and accountability," Ken Luongo, co-chairman of the FMWG, said in an emailed news release.

At the Seoul meeting, the leaders of more than 50 nations and international organizations made fresh commitments to collective action to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and eliminate some stocks.

The Seoul Communique calls for minimizing the use of weapons-usable, highly enriched uranium by the end of 2013 and sets

2014 as a target date for putting into effect an amendment to the Convention for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (CPPNM).

Among other results is an agreement between the U.S., France, Belgium and the Netherlands to produce medical isotopes without the use of highly enriched uranium by 2015.

“These pledges represent the most concrete results from the summit and represent some useful steps forward,” said Miles Pomper, senior researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.“If they are to be realized, however, the White House will have to be more active than it has been in winning congressional support for appropriate legislation and sufficient funding." (Yonhap News)