Latest:The United States and Russia have reportedly reached agreement on a new strategic arms reduction treaty on Tuesday. Officials are in Geneva to finalize the agreement in formal language after an agreement in principle was reached during a telephone conversation between the two presidents last week. The process could take as long as two months. The treaty is the first to establish strict limits on warheads with verification measures in place.Update: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put an upbeat spin on the status of the stalled START II treaty negotiations on Friday. Minister Lavrov said the talks between Russia and the United States will resume in early February and will soon result in a significant treaty further reducing each county's nuclear arsenal. National Security Advisor James Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen were in Moscow this week to further progress. Both sides would like to have an accomplishment to boast about at the upcoming Global Nuclear Security Summit in April and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference in May. Presidents Medvedev and Obama agreed during their Kremlin meeting in July that the treaty should reduce nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 for each country and reduce the number of delivery vehicles to between 500 and 1100. These levels are about 30% reductions in the size of the arsenals. A finished treaty would greatly enhance bilateral relations between the leading nuclear powers which reached a nadir after Russia's brief border war with Georgia. It would also lay the foundation for even further reductions which President Obama desires to perhaps as low as 100 strategic nuclear systems each.
{First post 1.14.09}The START II negotiations between the US and Russia are still stalled. The sticking point apparently is, well, rocket science--telemetry to be exact. The previous strategic weapons agreement which expired in December contained language that allowed the other side access to real time data about missile tests. According to US sources, the Russians are balking at including similar language in START II. Technically most of the same information is now available through advance tracking and verification technology, but the lack of such telemetry access language could set off the hardliners in Congress thereby making ratification more difficult. The Russians abhor anything that smacks of American intrusiveness or overreaching. They want to link telemetry access to defensive missiles as well; a goal pushed by the man in charge, Mr. Putin. The administration wants to complete a treaty by the time of the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference which begins in May. The State Department has attempted to downplay the impasse in press conference, but has also implied that the US would not give up defensive missile telemetry by saying that the agreement on the table is about strategic offensive systems, not defensive systems. It seems to this writer that both sides should spend the extra dime to achieve mutual security and peace to replace mutual destruction.