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Arms Expert Calls for START Verification Extension By David Francis WASHINGTON — Until the United States and Russia are willing to abandon nuclear deterrence strategies, the verification mechanisms of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty must be extended to ensure the destruction of the nations’ nuclear weapons, a nuclear expert said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 15). “We ought to extend all transparency provisions of START I indefinitely,” Alexei Arbatov, co-chairman of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said during a panel discussion at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference on the nuclear verification. The 1991 treaty limits to 6,000 the number of deployed warheads in both the United States and Russia. It mandates that the two sides exchange data on strategic weapons, provide notification of weapons movement and testing, and allow on-site inspections and continuing monitoring activities to ensure obligations are being met. The verification mechanisms are due to expire on Dec. 5, 2009 Arbatov argued, though, the procedures must be maintained “to make sure the transparency provision is correct, that the data the two sides exchange is the correct data.” Maintaining verification procedure “would be a very important endeavor and would gain us time before the policies of the two states come to an understanding of the fact that we cannot cooperate to oppose new threats of the 21st century — terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and many others — if we continue to base our strategic relationship on the foundation of nuclear deterrence.” Verification of treaty compliance will remain necessary as long as the United States and Russia continue to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent against one another, Arbatov said. “Partners, or even allies, cannot have relations based on nuclear deterrence,” he said. “We need a new type of arms control; however, neither the political leadership of the United States nor the political leadership of Russia are presently ready to contemplate a new type of arms control that might provide with doing away with mutual nuclear deterrence.” The United States is talking with Russia about renewing the verification provisions, said panel member Paula DeSutter, U.S. assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation. “We will be working on the ‘What happens after START issue’ with our Russian partners,” she said. However, a senior Bush administration official familiar with U.S. negotiations with Russia said no date has been set to discuss renewing the verification mechanisms. Russia and the United States need to broadly agree on what mechanisms work and if they need to be continued, the official added. “We don’t want to just talk about the narrow definition of this and that and this.” The official did not elaborate on controversial provisions of the treaty. The official said the United States and Russia need to re-evaluate whether verification mechanisms are still needed given increased military cooperation and transparency between the two countries. The State Department in September declared that Russia was violating certain verification mechanisms of the treaty. Russia has prevented U.S. officials from inspecting nuclear warhead re-entry vehicles to ensure that Moscow is accurately representing the number of warheads it deploys, the department said in a report. Moscow has also stopped U.S. inspectors from examining launch canisters to determine if any are carrying a missile, and failed to share required telemetry information following ICBM tests, according to the report. The State Department attributes Russia’s noncompliance to differing interpretations of the treaty. The United States must use “all available tools,” including ongoing verification mechanisms, to ensure treaty compliance, said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center. Abandoning verification of existing treaties is “walking away from hard-won gains,” he said. Verification negotiations for disarmament treaties between the United States and Russia have deteriorated after years of cooperation due to political differences between leaders of each nation, said James Goodby, nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Foreign Service officer. He said this relationship must be maintained. “The Russian/American relationship today is not what we all want it to be,” he said. “I think we can do better.”
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