[Peace-discuss] Slash nuclear weapons?

[Brussel Morton K.]

This could lead to an important development…  --mkb

February 04 2009
President Obama seeks Russia deal to slash nuclear weapons

The radical new treaty would reduce the number of nuclear warheads to  
1,000 each

By Tim Reid

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks  
with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile  
of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent.

The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000  
each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the  
Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern  
Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow.

Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House  
to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non- 
proliferation negotiator in the Clinton Administration. The talks will  
be driven by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

No final decision on the defence shield has been taken by Mr Obama.  
Yet merely delaying the placement of US missiles in Poland and a radar  
station in the Czech Republic — which if deployed would cost the US $4  
billion annually — removes what has been a major impediment to Russian  
co-operation on arms reduction.

Any agreement would put pressure on Britain, which has 160 nuclear  
warheads, and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpiles.

Mr Obama has pledged to put nuclear weapons reduction at the heart of  
his presidency and his first move will be to reopen talks with Moscow  
to replace the 1991 US-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start),  
which expires in December. Under that pact, the two countries have cut  
their respective stockpiles from roughly 10,000 to 5,000.

“We are going to re-engage Russia in a more traditional, legally  
binding arms reduction process,” an official from the Administration  
said. “We are prepared to engage in a broader dialogue with the  
Russians over issues of concern to them. Nobody would be surprised if  
the number reduced to the 1,000 mark for the post-Start treaty.”

Efforts to revive the Start talks were fitful under Mr Bush and  
complicated by his insistence on building a missile defence shield.  
“If Obama proceeds down this route, this will be a major departure,”  
one Republican said. “But there will be trouble in Congress.”

The plan is also complicated by the nuclear ambitions of Iran, which  
launched its first satellite into space yesterday, and North Korea,  
which is preparing to test a long-range ballistic missile capable of  
striking the US.

Mr Obama views the reduction of arms by the US and Russia as critical  
to efforts to persuade countries such as Iran not to develop the Bomb.

Source: The Times of London 
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