Russia and US restart nuclear arsenal talks - May provide breakthrough in effort to ‘reset’ relations

Russia and US restart nuclear arsenal talks - May provide breakthrough in effort to ‘reset’ relations
By Charles Clover and Isabel Gorst in Moscow and Daniel Dombey in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: May 19 2009 11:39 | Last updated: May 19 2009 17:53
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/561d8f26-445d-11de-82d6-00144feabdc0.html


Russia and the US on Tuesday began talks in Moscow aimed at limiting their nuclear arsenals. The talks may provide the first breakthrough in an effort by both sides to “reset” a badly frayed relationship beset by mistrust.

The negotiations are intended to pave the way towards replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Start I, which expires in December.

US officials say a priority is to keep that arms control system – which they claim was neglected by the former Bush administration – alive.

The Obama team says it would be foolhardy to jettison the mechanisms put in place by the 1991 deal for each side to verify the size of the other’s nuclear arsenal. But swift progress will be needed in agreeing and ratifying a new treaty if the measures are not to expire.

Washington wants modest reductions in the two sides’ weapons in the current talks. A bigger cut – including the reduction to 1,000 warheads apiece favoured by Democratic liberals – would wait for another round.

The significance of the talks is more political than military: the outcome will largely determine the success or failure of a summit planned in July in Moscow between Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president.

Giving both leaders something to sign at the meeting – or at least the chance to demonstrate progress – will go a long way towards soothing tempers that have flared over Nato manoeuvres in Georgia and this month’s tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats accused of spying. These incidents had threatened US efforts to “hit the reset button” with Russia, in the words of US vice-president Joe Biden in February.

Andrew Kuchins, head of the Russia programme at CSIS, a Washington-based think-tank, said: “The key for the ‘reset’ . . . with the Russians is that we reach concrete agreements in time for the July summit.”

Differences remain but these should be tackled in the talks on Tuesday by US lead negotiator Rose Gottmuller, the assistant secretary of State, and her counterpart Anatoly Antonov, chief of the Russian foreign ministry’s security and arms control department. The US wants to limit the talks to nuclear warheads alone. Russia wants to limit delivery systems such as ICBMs, in which the US has an advantage.

“We are ready for a constructive dialogue and believe that the optimism expressed by both sides will bring about concrete results,” the Russian foreign ministry told Interfax.

The US faces pressure to link the nuclear arms talks with a retreat from plans to site an anti-missile shield in Poland that Russia says will undermine its own security.

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee, said talks could stall if the US went ahead with deployment of the shield in Poland. “If the Americans continue to insist on their right to develop anti-ballistic weaponry, the strategic disarmament will move at a significantly slower pace and could even get stuck,” he told the Vesti-24 television channel.