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Russia and the United States last week moved closer to agreement on a deal to replace the now-expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a high-level U.S. Defense Department official told lawmakers yesterday (see GSN, March 16).
"The differences have narrowed substantially over the last week or so," Principal Deputy Defense Undersecretary James Miller said, according to Bloomberg. "It is realistic to think now about concluding a treaty within the next several weeks. It does not mean that that’s going to be done."
"A thousand catches" emerged in past weeks at negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, but the differences between the sides are now "much narrower," he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged last July to cut their nations' respective strategic arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 deployed nuclear warheads under the new treaty. Negotiators have reportedly also agreed to reduce each state's arsenal of nuclear delivery vehicles -- missiles, submarines and bombers -- to between 700 and 800, down from the 1,100-vehicle limit set by the leaders.
Russia has sought to connect nuclear arsenal reductions under the pact to limitations on a planned U.S. missile shield in Europe (Gienger/Kim, Bloomberg, March 16).
"There will be a legally binding link with missile defense, so no problems will arise," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday, according to the Xinhua News Agency (Xinhua News Agency, March 16).
"We would be comfortable to sign this agreement in the Ukrainian capital," Lavrov said after speaking with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kostiantyn Gryshchenko. "As far as a concrete decision on the venue for the agreement's signing is concerned, it's the presidents of Russia and the United States who will make it, proceeding from the possibility to compare schedules, (and) find an appropriate time and place," Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, March 16).
Although Obama and Medvedev have maintained considerable rapport since the U.S. president's inauguration last year, lower-level Russian intelligence and security officials have grown more suspicious of Washington, Time magazine reported yesterday.
"It's been frustrating. We came in with an aggressive reset mentality, and it was not necessarily shared by everyone in the Russian government. The Russians are overwhelmed by all the things we want to do tomorrow, and they say, Let's take time," a high-level U.S. official said (Simon Shuster, Time, March 16).