By Greg Webb

Global Security Newswire

The Bush administration last week revealed a possible new willingness to consider nuclear arms control agreements, despite the unilateral nature of the reciprocal nuclear reductions announced two weeks ago by U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin (see GSN, Nov. 14).

“The next step is to codify these reductions, to include measures for verification, without the multi-year negotiations that used to be necessary in Cold War days,” wrote U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow in Friday’s Moscow Times.  (Click here to read text.)

In a speech given the same day, Vershbow said the two nations would pursue this next step “in the coming months.”  (Click here to read speech.

Vershbow is the first administration official since the Crawford, Texas, summit to endorse publicly the concept of codified, verifiable reductions.

At that meeting from Nov. 12 to 14, Bush announced that the United States would reduced its “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads” to between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next 10 years and Putin said Russia would “respond in kind.”

Getting a written agreement, however, remained a bone of contention.  Putin expressed his desire to have a new treaty, including verification measures, but the Bush administration has so far refused to commit to a formal agreement.  Bush himself said he was willing to “write it down on a piece of paper,” but U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has said the administration has not decided what form of written agreement it is willing to sign.

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