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Medvedev: Significant progress
in US-Russia nuclear talks
Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev (2ndL) with the leader of The United Russia Party Boris Gryzlov
(L), the leader of the Communist Party of Russia Gennady Zyuganov(C), the
leader of the Fair Russia
party Sergei Mironov (2ndR) and nationalist Liberal Democratic Party
leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky
(R) during their meeting at Zavidovo residence outside Moscow yesterday. —
AFP
MOSCOW —
The United States and Russia have made “significant” progress towards a new
nuclear disarmament treaty, President Dmitry Medvedev was quoted as saying
yesterday. “We have taken a fairly serious step forward, and to a
significant degree we have brought our positions closer,” Medvedev said,
quoted by the Itar-Tass and RIA-Novosti state news agencies. The
negotiations “are not proceeding easily, but on many positions we have
reached agreement with the Americans,” the president said during a meeting
with senior Russian lawmakers.
US and Russian negotiators have been in lengthy talks on a replacement for
the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a key Cold War-era
disarmament pact which expired in December. US President Barack Obama and
Medvedev have pledged to replace START, but the talks have got bogged down
in recent months amid disgreements over measures for missile monitoring.
Medvedev also warned that once a new agreement was reached, US and Russian
lawmakers should ratify it simultaneously, saying it would be “unacceptable”
for Russia’s Duma to ratify the treaty while the US Senate rejected it.
“Either we move together in ratifying a treaty which is well-reasoned and
reflects our plans for the future of strategic nuclear forces, or else this
process will not happen,” Medvedev said. The US constitution requires a
two-thirds majority vote in the Senate to ratify any treaty, and the Senate
is traditionally less predictable in its voting than the Duma, which usually
follows the will of the Kremlin. Some senators, mostly Republicans, have
threatened to block ratification of the START successor treaty if Obama
makes too many concessions on nuclear disarmament to Moscow.
On Thursday, a top US diplomat, US Under-Secretary of State William Burns,
said the United States and Russia were “on the verge” of completing the new
agreement after months of closed-door talks. The Obama administration has
made efforts to replace START a key element of its initiative to “reset”
US-Russian relations that were badly strained during the previous
administration of George W Bush. START, signed in the closing days of the
Cold War, imposed strict limits on the US and Russian nuclear arsenals and
set up a system of mutual inspections and data exhcanges to ensure
compliance.
The broad outlines of the new treaty have been clear since a summit in July,
when Obama and Medvedev agreed that the replacement treaty should slash the
number of warheads on either side to between 1,500 and 1,675. The presidents
also agreed that the number of “carriers” capable of delivering the warheads
should be limited to between 500 and 1,100. The United States has said it
currently has some 2,200 nuclear warheads, while Russia is believed to have
about 3,000. — AFP |
