The United States and Russia have made an "agreement in principle" on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Feb. 1).
(Feb. 3) -
A U.S. Minuteman 3 ICBM lifts off in a test. The United States and Russia have reportedly reached an "agreement in principle" on a deal to replace a key Cold War-era arms control treaty (U.S. Air Force photo).
The deal would require the countries to reduce their respective stockpiles of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads, down from the 2,200-warhead ceiling that both states much reach by 2012 under another treaty.
Each state's arsenal of nuclear delivery vehicles -- missiles, submarines and bombers -- would be reduced to between 700 and 800 under the pact. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last summer informally set the limit at 1,100.
The two leaders offered a preliminary endorsement for the agreement during a telephone discussion last week.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, Washington's top delegate to the talks, traveled Monday to Geneva, Switzerland, to assist in preparing the agreement's final text and producing a legal document from the agreed terms, according to an Obama administration official.
"There may be finessing and fine-tuning, but the issues, from our perspective, are all addressed," the official said, noting that the process could take between one week and two months (Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 3).
The START talks are "in the endgame," and only "technical annexes" must still be addressed, U.S. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher said, according to the Associated Press (Associated Press, Feb. 3).
Negotiations on the deal are "in the home stretch," and Russian leaders hope to complete the pact within the next few weeks, a high-level Russian official told the Journal.
Moscow has agreed to provide the United States with details from its missile flight tests, but a critical Russian ballistic-missile complex vacated by U.S. inspectors would remain off-limits, officials said (see GSN, Nov. 20, 2009).
The landmark treaty would include firm restrictions on fielding of strategic nuclear weapons as well as measures for monitoring compliance, said Daryl Kimball, head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. When the new pact becomes public, the former Cold War rivals are likely to announce plans for additional "consultations" aimed at further reducing strategic nuclear arsenals and restricting tactical nuclear-weapon deployments, he said (see related GSN story, today; Weisman, Wall Street Journal).
U.S. and Russian lawmakers must sign off on the completed treaty before it can enter into force. The nations would discuss how to coordinate the document's ratification, one high-level Russian lawmaker said.
"Together with the colleagues from the U.S. Senate we will carry out preparatory work for the synchronized ratification of the treaty," RIA Novosti quoted Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Russian Federation Council's international affairs committee, as saying (RIA Novosti, Feb. 3).
The Obama administration would probably seek ratification of the treaty this year, and the U.S. Senate is likely to endorse the document despite Washington's "polarized" political climate, Tauscher said (Associated Press).