Negotiations aimed at replacing the now-expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty have paused and are expected to start again in the middle of next month, the Xinhua News Agency reported (see GSN, Dec. 22).
(Dec. 23) -
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller and Russian Foreign Ministry official Anatoly Antonov, shown in April, are leading nuclear arms control negotiations that have entered recess until January (Alberto Pizzoli/Getty Images).
"Our goal remains to conclude a solid treaty for the president's signature as soon as possible, and we expect that the teams will resume their negotiations in [Geneva, Switzerland] in mid-January," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said yesterday.
In July, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced they would reduce each of their countries' deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 weapons in the new agreement. Under the 2002 Moscow Treaty, the former Cold War adversaries were required to cut their arsenals to 2,200 each by the end of 2012.
The negotiation process is "very, very complex," Crowley said. "We've made progress ... we're in a pretty good position" (Wang/Jiang, Xinhua News Agency, Dec. 23).
"We had hoped to resolve the complex issues that these treaty negotiations present by the end of the year. I don't think that we're particularly concerned, given the complexity of these issues, that it's taking a longer period of time," he said.
Before leaving Geneva for the recess, U.S. diplomats engaged in "an intensive period of negotiations with their Russian counterparts over me than two months," RIA Novosti quoted Crowley as saying.
"Clearly, over the course of these two months, we have made dramatic progress. There are still issues that we continue to work through, so there's still more work to be done. But I think we remain confident that given good faith and the ongoing efforts of both sides, that this will get done," Crowley said (RIA Novosti, Dec. 23).
One security analyst chided the Obama administration for setting specific dates as goals for completing the talks, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
"Diplomacy by deadline has not been a good way to go -- you end up losing all leverage," said Henry Sokolski, head of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.
Moscow and Washington have continued to disagree over terms for verifying compliance with the pact; such monitoring measures would become more important as the nations' nuclear arsenals shrink in size, Sokolski argued.
"Verification actually starts to become more important because the numbers are lower, and because in this treaty we are going to be counting launchers," he said (Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 22).
Delays in the agreement's completion are not surprising, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine told Xinhua.
"They are basically negotiating in nine months a new treaty," whereas the pact's 1991 predecessor was prepared over more than six years, said Steven Pifer, now an arms control analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Moscow is likely pushing to decrease the level of missile telemetry data the sides would exchange under the new pact, Pifer said.
"With telemetry access, we'll have a good understanding of Russian missile performance, they'll have a good understanding of American missile performance, that kind of transparency is very reassuring," he said (Xinhua News Agency).
Difficulties in finalizing the START replacement pact could bode poorly for plans to negotiate reductions to nonstrategic nuclear weapons held by each side, Sokolski added (see GSN, Dec. 17).
“I don’t doubt they should try, but the trouble they’re having now tells me it would only get a lot harder -- especially in [an election] year in the U.S.,” he said (LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor).