Russia's foreign minister yesterday reaffirmed his goal of negotiating new limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, not just extending the provisions of a 1991 arms control treaty set to expire this year, Reuters reported (see GSN, March 2).
A new deal should also include caps "on all types of delivery vehicles," said Sergei Lavrov, expressing an aim that had been persistently thwarted by the Bush administration, which was willing to discuss only limits on warhead numbers.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed by U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, is set to lapse in December, potentially removing many of the verification systems the two nations use to monitor each other's strategic nuclear forces.
"We need to find a new agreement," Lavrov said, not just extend the existing pact.
The START reductions, restricting each nation to no more than 6,000 warheads on all types of launchers, "have long been implemented and more than implemented," he said. "We and the Americans now have really much less than is allowed by the current agreement" (Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters, March 3).
"So extending it further would mean sending a wrong signal that one can build arms now, and that is wrong," he added (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, March 2).