|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Russia-U.S. Security Talks Set For Next Month
Russia and the United States are expected to hold a series of high-level security talks beginning next month, Inside the Pentagon reported yesterday (see GSN, June 28). Nonproliferation, strategic arms control and counterterrorism are expected to top the agenda, a senior Bush administration official said this week. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak are to convene the first set of talks in mid-September in Washington. Sources from both countries said Joseph and Kislyak would discuss the future of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which required the United States and the former Soviet Union to reduce their respective strategic arsenals to 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 deployed ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles and heavy bombers. The treaty members — now consisting of the United States, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine — met the requirements by December 2001. The agreement is scheduled to expire in 2009. Neither Moscow nor Washington wants to extend the existing agreement, according to the official. “Both sides are saying, ‘Let’s look at this in a new way. Let’s see what parts — if any — of the START Treaty have retained their value and importance and benefit to us, and let’s start talking from there,’” the source said. Negotiations are not likely to lead to pacts akin to the treaty, the official told Inside the Pentagon. “I don’t think anyone has an appetite for those big, giant documents that try to script every single element of strategic forces,” the official added. “That’s sort of a thing of the past, I hope.” U.S. officials want to address both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, the source said. “We want to look at where the two countries are going in terms of their nuclear doctrine, and their nuclear programs and their programs that affect one another,” the official said. “Not necessarily in a threatening way, but so we can understand and in what directions we are each going.” A Russian official said this week that his country is likely to seek reductions in strategic arsenals beyond the levels prescribed in the START and Moscow treaties. Asked whether U.S. officials would do the same, the senior U.S. official said, “That’s just not clear to me. I think we must first see how countries see these types of systems, what the trends and directions are at this point. And we’ll have to sort that out later” (Sebastian Sprenger, Inside the Pentagon, Aug. 17).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
