WELLINGTON -- New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Tuesday that the second Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul had been another important step towards securing nuclear materials and reducing the global threat of nuclear terrorism.

At the summit, which concluded Tuesday, Key also announced New Zealand would contribute 500,000 NZ dollars ($411,049) towards a US-led project to remove highly-enriched uranium from Uzbekistan back to Russia to be reprocessed and securely stored.

"This project reinforces our support for the securing of vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide," Key said in a statement from his office.

New Zealand had a solid history of supporting nuclear security work around the world, including in the former Soviet Union and in Southeast Asia, he said.

Since 2004, New Zealand has provided around 6 million NZ dollars towards G8 Global Partnership projects aimed at securing nuclear materials.

Key said New Zealand had a strong and principled voice on nuclear issues so it had an important role to play in the process.

"We are a small country, but we can make a difference on this global issue. My statement to the summit today reinforced that, even as a small country, we are not immune to the risks posed by nuclear terrorism. I urged my counterparts to take seriously the commitments we made at the last summit in Washington in 2010 and to push further to ensure nuclear materials don't fall into the wrong hands," he said.

The 53 states represented at the summit issued a communiqu that would guide their collective work until the third Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in 2014.