United States, Russia Extend START Arms Cut Pact Past Deadline
Media-Newswire.com
The United States and Russia have agreed to maintain a critical nuclear arms control agreement past its expiration date until a new agreement is reached, saying that strategic stability is very important.
In April, when President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held their first face-to-face meeting in London, the two leaders pledged to work for a world free of nuclear arms, and said every effort would be made before the end of this year to reduce their nuclear arsenals with the long-term goal of reducing global nuclear tensions.
In a joint statement December 4 issued in Washington and Moscow, they said that it’s too important to let the terms of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( START ) expire on December 5 while negotiators continue working on a successor treaty. …
At the Moscow Summit in July, Obama and Medvedev agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warheads each possesses to a range of 1,500 to 1,675 over seven years. The treaty would also limit the means of delivery, which include nuclear-powered submarines, long-range bombers, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The missiles can be used to deliver non-nuclear warheads over the same distance, and that has been one of several highly technical areas of discussion.
START was signed July 31, 1991, by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush; President Ronald Reagan originally proposed the treaty in 1982. It was designed to limit nuclear warheads to about 6,000 in each arsenal.
In 2002, the United States and Russia agreed to the Moscow Treaty that sought to reduce nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed warheads by 2012.
In Prague earlier this year, Obama called for a nuclear-weapons-free world and pledged to work for greater arms control and nonproliferation goals. It comes at a time when Washington is enlisting Moscow’s support in curbing the nuclear ambitions of both North Korea and Iran. The United States and Russia participate in talks aimed at convincing the two regimes to give up weapons and long-range missile development programs in return for economic and political incentives.
START negotiations are being held in Geneva and are led by Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller and Russian negotiator Anatoly Antonov. They have been working quickly to resolve remaining differences in areas of offensive weapons levels and missile defense issues.
