Russia must retain no fewer than 1,500 deployed nuclear warheads under a new arms control agreement with the United States, the head of Russian strategic missile forces told Interfax today (see GSN, June 8).
U.S. and Russian diplomats are negotiating an agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire on Dec. 5. The nations agreed in 2002 that they would each cut back their launch-ready nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads within 10 years, but some experts have urged the sides to take the reductions much further in a START successor deal.
If Moscow heeds Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov's call, though, the reduction would be limited to a few hundred warheads.
"In this contract on a new strategic forces treaty, Russia must not have less than 1,500 nuclear warheads, but this decision is up to the political authorities of the country," Solovtsov said (Conor Sweeney, Reuters, June 10).
Meanwhile, Germany urged Moscow and Washington to also look at eliminating nonstrategic nuclear weapons intended for battlefield use, ITAR-Tass reported (see GSN, May 6).
"Isn't it time to include substrategic and tactical nuclear weapons in the nuclear disarmament process, in order to [eliminate] once and for all the leftovers of the Cold War on the territory of Russia and Europe?" German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
"From the military point of view, those weapons are absolutely senseless today," he added.
"The year 2009 should become the time ... when disarmament problems will be on the top of the agenda at the international level," Steinmeier said (ITAR-Tass, June 10).