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U.S.-Russia I: Working Groups to be Created Russia and the United States will set up three working groups on strategic disarmament issues, Russian officials said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 17). The three groups will work on issues of strategic arms reduction and missile defense, military and technical cooperation and anti-terrorism efforts, said Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, first deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces. “These groups will work under my responsibility on the Russian side and under [defense undersecretary] Douglas Feith on the American side,” Baluyevsky said. Russia and the United States are working to prepare an agreement on offensive nuclear weapons reductions that could be ready by the summer of this year, said Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the Russian general staff, on Saturday (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 21). Any strategic offensive weapons reductions must equally guarantee both Russian and U.S. security, Baluyevsky said Sunday. He said his delegation at last week’s arms reduction talks in Washington outlined six principles on offensive nuclear weapons reductions: * The principle of the parties’ equal security; * Transparency of the two states’ nuclear policies; * Interdependence between strategic offensive and defensive weapons reductions; * Irreversibility of offensive reductions; * Control over the reduction process; and * Cooperation in decision-making and available funding for the elimination of reduced offensive weapons. U.S. and Russian military experts still disagree on offensive weapons reductions, Baluyevsky said. “The basic disagreement about the process of reducing strategic offensive weapons is that the U.S. intends to keep the nuclear weapons that are removed from delivery means in storage, and not to eliminate them,” he said. “Attempts are being made to change the process of radical reduction to a simple lowering of nuclear weapons readiness,” Baluyevsky said. “I think that neither we nor the world public will understand such cuts” (Interfax, Jan. 20). In a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, former special representative for nuclear safety and dismantlement James Goodby wrote that the United States and Russia tried once before to negotiate an agreement to ensure the irreversibility of nuclear weapons reductions. In 1995, former U.S. and Russian Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin committed their respective governments to reciprocal monitoring of fissile materials taken from nuclear warheads, Goodby wrote. The next year, however, Russia suspended the talks due to lack of political support for the plan, he wrote. The new U.S.-Russian relationship, however, “may make it possible to accomplish in 2002 what could not be done in 1996,” Goodby wrote. He added that any arrangements on reductions could be made without formal treaties and monitoring would be relatively nonintrusive. “Most important, Russia and the United States will gain valuable experience in working together to replace mutual deterrence with mutual assurance,” Goodby wrote (James Goodby, Washington Post, Jan. 21). Russia Changes Nuclear Forces Strategy Baluyevsky said Russia has radically changed the concept of its nuclear forces, Russian weekly military newspaper Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye reported yesterday. “In our prospective plans of military construction, priority is given to the naval aspect of the triad,” said Baluyevsky. The shift in emphasizing the naval arm of the Russian nuclear force came at the expense of ICBMs and Strategic Missile Forces, according to the weekly. In March 2001, Russian Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov discussed plans to restart submarine ballistic missile production at the Makeev State Missile Center. This year, the center is expected to use its production facilities to the full extent for this purpose, the weekly reported. Major land-based missile cuts are expected, according to the weekly. In July 2001, Russia submitted to the United States a document that outlined the state of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces. The memo showed there were 346 silo-based ICBMs: 166 RS-20 missiles, 150 RS-18 missiles, 6 RS-22 missiles and 4 Topol-M missiles, 36 railway-based RS-22s and 360 mobile Topols. Only 105 RS-18 and Topol-M missiles are expected to survive the cuts, the weekly reported. “Within the next five to seven, and probably 10 years, the state of the ground-based element of the Strategic Nuclear Forces will be fully satisfactory,” Baluyevsky said (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, Jan. 21).
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