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"President Obama is planning to increase spending on America's nuclear weapons stockpile just days after pledging to try to rid the world of them.

In his budget to be announced on Monday, Mr Obama has allocated £4.3billion to maintain the U.S. arsenal - £370million more than George Bush spent on nuclear weapons in his final year.

The Obama administration also plans to spend a further £3.1billion over the next five years on nuclear security.

The announcement comes despite the American President declaring nuclear weapons were the ‘greatest danger' to U.S. people during in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.

And it flies in the face of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to him in October for ‘his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples'.

The Nobel committee was attacked at the time for bestowing the accolade on a new president whose initiatives are yet to bear fruit - which included reducing the world stock of nuclear arms.The budget is higher than that allocated by George Bush - who was seen by many as a warmongering president in the wake of the Iraq invasion in 2003 - during his premiership."