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| US-Russia nuclear talks hit snag |
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Friday, November 13, 2009
MOSCOW: Talks between Moscow and Washington to replace a key nuclear disarmament treaty that expires next month have hit a snag over proposed restrictions on Russian missiles, a newspaper said on Thursday.
The dispute threatens to derail high-stakes talks on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which US President Barack Obama’s administration hopes to replace before it expires on December 5.
The Kommersant daily, citing an unnamed expert familiar with the START talks, said Washington was seeking to retain a provision from the original treaty on US monitoring of Russia’s arsenal of mobile ground-based missiles.
“They are offering to keep and even strengthen control over our mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) such as the Topol,” the expert was quoted as saying by Kommersant.
Russia is against the proposal since the United States currently does not have its own mobile ground-based ICBMs and it is therefore of “unilateral character,” he said. General Nikolai Makarov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, confirmed the talks had hit a snag but predicted the problems would be resolved by the two countries’ negotiators.
“There is a number of problems, chief among them control over inspections and some numerical data,” Makarov told reporters at the Kremlin ahead of President Dmitry Medvedev’s annual address to the nation.
Makarov said US inspectors have regularly visited a Russian missile-production site under provisions in the current treaty while Russia had no such intrusive inspection rights of US missile production sites.
“We want the treaty to ensure both the security of the Russian Federation and of the United States on equal levels,” Makarov said. Kommersant said the talks had hit another sticking point over the maximum number of “carriers” capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
“In their package, the Americans stipulated a new ceiling for warhead carriers that we don’t quite agree with,” the expert told Kommersant, referring to proposals presented to Moscow last month by US National Security Adviser James Jones. Besides ground-based ICBMs, the term “carriers” also encompasses submarine-launched missiles and heavy bombers. US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency earlier this week that Washington was “disappointed” with Russia’s answer to Jones’ proposals.
But in a sign that both nations were still keen to reach a deal, Russian and US diplomats have already started looking for a venue where the two countries could sign the new agreement, Kommersant said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also predicted that any remaining problems would be ironed out in the next three weeks and voiced hope a new pact would be signed by December 5. START, a landmark treaty seen as a cornerstone of Cold War-era strategic arms control, led to steep cuts in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
