US and Russian leaders hail nuclear arms treaty

Bartamaha (Prague):- US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, have signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty in the Czech capital, Prague.

The treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to each reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 – 30% lower than the previous ceiling.
Mr Obama said it was a key milestone, but only the “first step on a longer journey” of nuclear disarmament.
Mr Medvedev said the deal would create safer conditions throughout the world.
If ratified by lawmakers in both countries, the treaty will replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) of 1991, which expired in December.

Missile defence

The US and Russian leaders signed the New Start treaty at a ceremony attended by hundreds of officials in the lavishly decorated Spanish Hall of Prague Castle, the Czech president’s residence.

Under the pact, each side is allowed a maximum of 1,550 warheads, about 30% lower than the figure of 2,200 that each side was meant to reach by 2012 under the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (Sort).
They are also allowed, in total, no more than 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear arms.
The new limit on delivery systems is less than half the current ceiling of 1,600 – though each heavy bomber counts as one warhead irrespective of the fact that it might carry multiple bombs or missiles.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the New Start treaty marked a “new level of trust” between the countries.

He said the original Start treaty, which expired in December, was “born from the Cold War” and contained much that was “discriminatory” towards Russia.
Mr Lavrov noted that the new pact explicitly acknowledged a direct link between offensive nuclear weapons and missile defence systems, and warned that his country could opt out if it felt threatened by US plans.
“Russia will have the right to abandon the Start treaty if a quantitative and qualitative build-up of the US strategic anti-missile potential begins to significantly affect the efficiency of Russia’s strategic forces,” he added.
It was Moscow’s concerns over Washington’s plans to base interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic that helped delay the new treaty. President Obama shelved the idea in September.
Mr Lavrov said Washington’s current plans – which include ground-based interceptor missiles in Romania – seemed acceptable.
The White House has said it hopes and expects the US Senate to ratify the treaty this year. Senate ratification requires 67 votes, which means it must include Republicans.
The Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, must also approve the treaty, but as long as the Kremlin supports it, ratification there is expected to be a formality.
Disarmament vision

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus, who is in Prague, says the real significance of this deal is that it marks a warming of US-Russian ties and heralds, perhaps, tougher Russian action on Iran’s nuclear programme.

It also gives Mr Obama a disarmament success that he hopes will strengthen his hand at next month’s review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), our correspondent says.
An overhaul of the 40-year-old pact is seen as the central pillar of the US president’s efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
However, much more significant cuts in long-range nuclear weapons could take years of negotiation with the Russians, who do not share Mr Obama’s ambitious disarmament vision, our correspondent says.

Nuclear weapons are in fact looming larger in Russia’s security equation at a time when their role in US strategic thinking is becoming more circumscribed, he adds.
On Tuesday, President Obama unveiled the new Nuclear Posture Review, which narrows the circumstances in which the US would use nuclear weapons.
“The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations,” it said.
Countries which the US regards not complying with the NPT, including Iran and North Korea, will not be spared a nuclear response.

North Korea pulled out of the NPT in 2003, while the US claims Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies.

Mr Obama also pledged not to develop any new nuclear weapons, a move pushed through in the face of resistance by the Pentagon.

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Source:- BBC