#6150
[Second Issue of the Day]
#12
U.S., Russia inch ahead in arms talks
By John Zarocostas
GENEVA, Switzerland, March 21 (UPI) -- Senior U.S. and Russian arms control negotiators edged forward in talks here Thursday to cut operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads by 2012, a senior U.S. administration official said.
"We are making progress," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We're closing the gaps and trying to refine the differences."
But, the official added, "We're not going to reach agreement here."
Talks are aimed at codifying an arms reduction agreement last December between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to cut their active strategic nuclear arsenal from current levels of around 6,000 warheads each, to between 1,700-2,200 by 2012.
The two days of talks in Geneva between Georgie Mamedov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, and John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, were designed to "identify the remaining differences" before a meeting in April between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
There are hopes in both Washington and Moscow that Powell and Ivanov can craft a final deal that would be signed during President Bush's scheduled visit to Russia in May. Bush said on March 14 that he hoped to sign an agreement then. He said the U.S. was "glad" to talk about storage versus destruction, but he said "I think the most important thing, though, is verification, to make sure that whatever decision is made, there is open verification so as to develop trust."
The final agreement is expected to be a "short and simple document of three to four pages," and will not have annual warhead reduction targets, the senior U.S. official said.
However, arms control diplomats expect any final accord to include a monitoring mechanism, such as a joint commission or committee.
In talks Thursday, which were held at the U.S. mission, the U.S. official said the United States had received a "Russian counter-proposal," and a briefing "on their (Russia's) nuclear posture," from the deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, Uri Baluevskiy.
In the talks, the two sides have differences over counting rules for inter-continental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, on submarines, heavy bombers and other delivery systems.
Another contentious issue is what happens to thousands of nuclear warheads if they're taken out of operational stocks.
The Bush administration favors "downloaded" warheads to be stored, whereas the Russian contingent prefers warheads be destroyed after deactivation.
However, in talks in Washington last week, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defense minister, showed a "better understanding" on the downloaded warheads issue, the U.S. official said. He said he was hopeful Moscow would be flexible on the issue.
According to senior diplomats close to Russia, Moscow will probably accept some partial solution -- possibly destroying some missiles and storing some.
The same sources noted "it can only take a couple of hours to put together again a downloaded warhead." Another possible solution, the source said, would be to separate the warheads, but keep them in different sites far away from delivery systems.
Back to the Top Next Issue
- Back to the Top -