Russia doesn’t want to go below 1,500 warheads
MOSCOW — A top Russian general said Wednesday that a new U.S.-Russian arms control deal mustn’t cut the number of nuclear warheads below 1,500 each, news reports said.
Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, the chief of the military’s Strategic Missile Forces, said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies that it will be up to the Kremlin to make the final decision on how deep the cuts should be.
“We believe that we mustn’t go below 1,500 warheads,” Solovtsov was quoted as saying. “But in any case the issue will be decided by the political leadership.”
Russian and U.S. officials are currently negotiating a successor deal to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which expires in December. Negotiators are to give a progress report to their presidents by the time President Barack Obama visits Moscow on July 6-8.
START, signed by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush, led each country to cut its nuclear warheads by at least one-quarter, to about 6,000.
In 2002, then-President Vladimir Putin and President George W. Bush signed the so-called Treaty of Moscow, which called for further cuts to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed warheads by 2012.
As it stands now, the United States has 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed; Russia has 2,800.
Russian and American arms control experts believe that the START successor deal would seek to cut arsenals to 1,500 on each side, although some reports mentioned even lower levels.
Failure to negotiate a replacement pact would leave Russia and the U.S. unable to inspect and verify each other’s stockpile of nuclear warheads.
“The expiration of START I without new agreements reached could seriously upset the stability of the international regime of control over strategic nuclear arms,” Solovtsov was quoted as saying Wednesday.
Obama’s push for better ties with Moscow, which deteriorated under his predecessor, paved the way for the rapid launch of talks on a successor deal to START.
However, Russia’s firm opposition to a Bush administration plan to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a related radar in the Czech republic to defend against a potential threat from Iran has made the talks about reducing the U.S.-Russian nuclear stockpiles difficult.
Obama has put the missile defense plan on hold, but Russia wants the U.S. to scrap it altogether.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that prospects for the United States and Russia to reach common ground on missile defense have improved slightly as Moscow grows increasingly concerned about Iran. Gates told senators that U.S. offers to put radar or data exchange centers in Russia are among the options being discussed.
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