14.07.2009
Challenges to US-Russia Nuke Deal
Russian Pundits on Possible Reductions US terms for new START deal not yet acceptable to Moscow - Russian pundit ITAR-TASS, Moscow, 6 July: US terms for a new START treaty are not yet acceptable to Russia, the director of the USA and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergey Rogov, told an ITAR-TASS correspondent today. "A very important meeting between the Russian and the US presidents is to take place, which may begin a new chapter in Russian-US relations. Moscow and Washington are not happy with how their relations have been developing and want to start again," he said. "But it is very difficult to do this since the previous US administration has left behind an extremely bad legacy. The situation is compounded by the fact that the time frame is very tight because the START-1 treaty expires already in December," Rogov said. "The Bush administration did not want to conclude this treaty. Barack Obama wants to act differently. He has agreed to conclude a new agreement," he continued. "But a negotiation process usually takes several years. Whereas this time many important issues need to be agreed and resolved in a matter of weeks," Rogov said."A new START treaty will be the key issue in the talks between Dmitriy Medvedev and Barack Obama. There are many differences in the positions on this matter. "These differences are not great as regards the number of nuclear warheads, 1,500-1,700 warheads. However, there is a significant difference in the number of delivery vehicles, that is ballistic missiles and heavy bombers," he said. "Moscow wants to reduce this figure approximately three-fold, while the Americans, by about 33 per cent. That means a 33-per-cent reduction against the START-1 figure: around 1,000 bombers instead of 1,600. While we would like to have a reduction of (presumably, down to) 600 delivery vehicles," Rogov added. He said: "If the US terms are accepted, then we may end up with a situation when the Americans 'having unloaded' their missiles would be able, if necessary, to bring warheads back in a matter of months." "Thus, the Americans would be able to triple their nuclear offensive potential. We do not have such a possibility since old Soviet missiles have already used up a significant part of their service life and many of them have already been written off," Rogov said. He continued: "This is a very serious problem because if the US side's terms are accepted, as (former US President George) Bush suggested we do, that would mean agreeing to a doubling or even tripling of the US strategic offensive potential. This is unacceptable to us." "One should not count on the US administration taking any radical steps in the nuclear issue given that the Pentagon is expected to publish its new nuclear and new military doctrine by the end of the year, while work of these documents has not even started. If Obama understands that the American terms for START are not acceptable to us, he will be able to give relevant instructions and then we will get a very good package of agreements on nuclear arms control," Rogov said. Russian defence pundit notes little progress in arms deal with US Interfax-AVN, Moscow, 6 July: The parameters of the Russian-US agreements on strategic offensive arms and their delivery vehicles show that the sides have failed to significantly dovetail their positions, an authoritative Russian expert, the former chief of the Strategic Missile Troops Main Staff, Col-Gen Viktor Yesin, has said. "The limits turned out to be too fuzzy. For delivery vehicles the range is between 500 and 1,100 and for warheads, between 1,500 and 1,675. In effect, these limits reflect the sides' bidding positions. That indicates that the sides have not yet managed to dovetail their positions on the reduction of strategic offensive arms," Yesin told Interfax-AVN on Monday [6 July]. He said: "Russia is unlikely to accept the Americans' desire to preserve as many delivery vehicles as possible since the figure of 1,100 is what they are asking for." "It indicates that the Americans' are seeking to destroy practically nothing from the existing arsenal of strategic delivery vehicles and to reach the indicated limit of 1,500-1,675 warheads by discharging delivery vehicles, that is be removing warheads from them and storing them with a possibility to install them back in future," Yesin said. "Thus, the USA will have the possibility to enjoy a huge return potential, which may amount to 2,000-3,000 warheads. Russia for various reasons does not have such a possibility," Yesin said. He added: "It is not yet clear whether the Americans have taken into account Russia's concerns over the deployment of elements of American missile defence [in Eastern Europe] or not." "So there is still a lot of thorough work to do before an equal agreement on strategic offensive arms is drawn up," Yesin concluded. Russian expert unconvinced by Obama-Medvedev statement on nuclear cuts Interfax-AVN Moscow, 6 July: Russia and the USA have so far not managed to agree on concrete parameters of a new agreement on strategic offensive weapons (SNV) because they still have disagreements over the problem of missile defence (PRO), Maj-Gen Vladimir Dvorkin, former head of the 4th Central Scientific Research Institute of the Russian Defence Ministry, thinks. "I think that the unresolved issue of missile defence is the main reason why the sides have essentially made no progress in preparing a new legally binding agreement on strategic offensive weapons. The statement on missile defence that was published today attests to only extremely insignificant steps towards each other in this area," Vladimir Dvorkin said when commenting on the (6 July) Moscow agreement (joint understanding) between the presidents of the Russian Federation and the USA. In his opinion, the US plans to deploy a global missile defence system, including the plans to deploy its elements in Poland and the Czech Republic, is "the key obstacle to reaching the new agreement on strategic offensive weapons, with more specific numbers of delivery vehicles and warheads." "The range of delivery vehicles - 500-1,100 pieces - if it is set forth at a new level in the new agreement, opens wide possibilities for the USA to have a significant retaliatory potential (vernacular: vozvratnyy potentsial), because it is unclear whether they will destroy the existing delivery vehicles or not," the expert said. Besides, he continued, "such substantial ranges are mathematically incorrect and have no military significance." As regards the parameters concerning nuclear warheads, 1,500-1,675, Vladimir Dvorkin thinks that this also shows that (the sides) "have not managed to reach concrete agreements."
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