International

Bush, Putin to sign arms pact

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

New York MAY 13. The agreement that the United States and Russia have agreed to, will dramatically cut nuclear arsenals. The landmark deal will be signed by the President, George W. Bush, when he travels to Moscow between May 23 and 26 and has his summit meeting with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

Last year, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin agreed in principle to limit arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads from the 6,000 allowed by the START 1 treaty. Currently, it is estimated that the United States has some 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons and the Russians about 6,000. Under the terms of the START 2 accord, the number of nuclear weapons would have to be between 3,000 and 3,500; and in 1997, the then President, Bill Clinton, and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, agreed in principle that a START 3 treaty should limit the arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads.

One of the main objections of the Russians was the U.S.s' plan of storing as opposed to destroying the nuclear weapons. A senior administration official has been quoted as saying that under the landmark deal which will be initialled later this month, some of the weapons will be stored and others destroyed. Also, the Russians were insisting on a full fledged treaty as opposed to an "Informal Agreement'' that the White House wanted. Mr. Putin now seems to have had his way and this Treaty, when formalised, will have to be submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

The hesitancy in going in for a full-fledged formal treaty stems from an apprehension of the Democratic-controlled Senate. An informal arrangement would have bypassed this ratification procedure. "We will begin the new era of U.S.-Russian relations and that's important'', Mr. Bush remarked. "This is good news for the American people today. It will make the world more peaceful and put behind us the Cold War once and for all'', he said.

Vladimir Radyuhin reports from Moscow:

The statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday on the breakthrough in talks with the U.S. gave no details of agreements reached and was in stark contrast with a down-beat view conveyed by Russia's chief arms negotiator just hours earlier.

As he was going into talks with the U.S. Undersecretary of State, John Bolton, on Monday the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Georgy Mamedov, described the negotiations as "difficult.''

At the same time, he suggested that the sides would put aside all issues on which they disagreed and try to resolve them later through "corresponding mechanism'' to be set up for the purpose.

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