![]() ![]() They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive discussions. officials in Washington said Thursday the technical issues still to be resolved were in an "annex" to the main treaty, and they foresaw no hurdles to completing the entire deal within days. Both would play major roles in ratification of the emerging treaty. Richard Lugar, the committee's ranking Republican. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Obama spent an hour Wednesday in the White House briefing Democratic Sen. It also would reduce the permissible number of strategic launchers - the missiles and bombers that deliver warheads to their targets. The new deal, whose provisions have not been made public, is expected to lower that to about 1,500. The Moscow Treaty set limits on both sides' strategic nuclear warheads at between 1,700 and 2,200. A 2002 deal, known as the Moscow Treaty, called for accelerated weapons reductions but did not include any mechanism for verifying them. The new agreement to reduce long-range nuclear weapons would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December.īoth sides said that the new treaty, like the 1991 agreement, should set up a mechanism for verifying compliance with its terms. The signing in Prague comes about a year after Obama declared his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech there. "Hard negotiations with the Russians will now be followed by hard negotiations with Republican senators to achieve ratification," Norris said. and Russian nuclear arsenals, predicted that the White House could find it difficult to win Senate approval. The treaty also must win approval by the parliament, and the two legislative processes are likely to take months. The signing will set the stage for a White House campaign to win Senate ratification. Otherwise, he said, the new era of good feeling between Washington and Moscow "may be a short-lived effect." "I think this also means that the environment of U.S.-Russia relations has improved, and I think we will feel the positive impact of that treat for some time," Trenin told the AP.īut he warned that both sides should move quickly to follow up the treaty with agreements on other thorny issues. President Barack Obama's effort to mend tattered U.S. ![]() Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, said Friday the treaty advances the causes of nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament, while standing as a "symbol" that U.S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |