2012info.ca Earth Watch

Obama, Russian leader announce deal on stockpiles

by Katherine Ling

E&E News: President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced a preliminary agreement today for further shrinking their countries’ nuclear arsenals and carriers by up to a third of the current treaty limits.

Their “mutual understanding” agreement says a final treaty to be reached by the end of this year would reduce each country’s strategic arms to between 500 and 1,100 delivery vehicles and 1,500 and 1,675 warheads.

“These are the new parameters within which our dialogue will be going on and where we hope to achieve final agreement that will be part of the new treaty,” Medvedev said in a statement released by the White House.

The agreement provides the first real details of how the United States and Russia will continue reducing excess nuclear arsenals built during the Cold War. It also provides insight as to how Obama and Medvedev might cooperate after icy relations between the two nations in recent years, including the tabling of a civil nuclear energy agreement by President George W. Bush last year.

The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will expire in December, and Obama has made it a priority to negotiate a legally binding follow-up agreement before then. Under the expiring START and a nonbinding treaty Bush negotiated in 2002, the maximum level of warheads is 2,200 and the maximum level of launch vehicles is 1,600. The final reduction levels will have a significant impact on current and future funding levels and mission directives for the Energy Department’s national laboratories that help maintain the U.S. weapons stockpile.

Obama flatly stated today that the treaty “will be completed this year.”

“This is an urgent issue and one in which the United States and Russia have to take leadership,” Obama said, according to a White House transcript. “It is very difficult for us to exert that leadership unless we are showing ourselves willing to deal with our own nuclear stockpiles in a more rational way. And that’s why this post-START agreement is so important, and I’m hopeful that we can reduce our nuclear arsenals by as much as a third and hopefully can move even beyond that in subsequent agreements and treaties.”

The two presidents also created a “U.S.-Russian Bilateral Presidential Commission” to expand cooperation into other areas — including energy and the environment, nuclear energy and security, foreign policy and counterterrorism, and science and technology. Obama said the commission will be coordinated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Russian counterpart, and Clinton would fly to Russia this fall “to carry this effort forward.”

Obama and Medvedev also agreed on a joint statement of nuclear-security cooperation that will help Obama achieve his stated goal of “securing all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years.” The statement includes a provision that states both countries remain committed to dispose of 34 metric tons of excess weapons plutonium, a level agreed to in 2000.

The United States is currently building a “mixed oxide Fuel fabrication facility” near Aiken, S.C., to convert plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. But Russia so far has not made any significant progress to dispose of its 34 metric tons, to the dismay of many members of Congress.

The joint statement also included both presidents’ commitment to “a common vision of the growth of clean, safe, secure and affordable nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

The two countries agreed that additional efforts will be made on developing prospective and innovative nuclear energy systems, research into reliable nuclear fuel cycle services and international approaches “for the establishment of nuclear fuel cycle services to secure the nuclear weapons nonproliferation regime.”

Share This