Washington, Feb 27 (IANS) US President Barack Obama will host an international nuclear security summit here April 12-13, the White House said.

"On April 12 and 13, the president will host a nuclear security summit at the Washington Convention Centre," Xinhua reported quoting White House spokesman Robert Gibbs as saying Friday.

"The purpose of the summit is to discuss steps we can collectively take to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent acts of nuclear terrorism," he added.

This confirmation of the highlighted event came after the US and Russia resumed their talks earlier this month in Geneva on a nuclear arms reduction treaty as a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that expired Dec 5, 2009.

Obama has embraced the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Talking about nuclear weapons, he called them "perhaps the greatest danger to the American people" in his first State of the Union address last month.