MOSCOW: Russia has announced a radical plan to overhaul more than 100 of its most powerful intercontinental nuclear missiles, which had been destined for the scrapheap under the arms reduction treaties with the United States.

A total of 144 of the missiles, which weigh 200 tons and can each carry ten warheads to the US from silos behind the Ural mountains, were due to be dismantled by 2007 under the Start-II weapons treaty signed by George Bush Sr and Boris Yeltsin nine years ago.

But the commander in chief of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces, Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov, has declared that the missiles — nicknamed Satan by the west during the Cold War — are to be refurbished and upgraded to keep them fully operational until 2014.

The decision has been seen as an indication of Russia’s desire to maintain a functioning nuclear arsenal, despite its warmer relations with the west and to aggressively pursue a strong negotiating position with the White House.

The missiles are considered particularly effective, since they send 50 warheads over their target area, 40 of which are decoys designed to outwit sophisticated missile defence systems of the kind planned by the Bush administration.

Ten warheads are left to deliver one-megaton payloads.

Satan missiles are land-based, allowing several to be launched simultaneously from the same place, thus increasing their chance of evading a defence system.

Their prolonged existence is a significant issue in Washington, which is at pains to justify and expedite the creation of a missile defence shield.

Gen Solovtsov announced that three divisions of the silo-based SS 18 “Satan” missiles would be saved, as would one division of the train-based SS 24 “Scalpel” heavy missiles.

It is Russia’s first practical step towards renovating its nuclear arsenal since the US declared in December that it considered the anti-ballistic-missile treaty obsolete.

President Bush said the treaty prevented the US defending itself against terrorism and claimed that a new era of entente with Russia meant it was no longer needed.

“We’re moving to replace mutually assured destruction with mutual cooperation,” Bush said at the time.

President Vladimir Putin replied that the decision was a “mistake”, but not a threat to Russia.

Six months later Russia pulled out of the Start-II treaty, which compelled it to destroy its Satan missiles.

Defence experts said the decision to renovate the Satan was also motivated by the cash crisis in the Russian armed forces.

“It is cheaper to keep maintaining the missiles than to dismantle them,” Yevgeny Miasnikov of the Centre for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow said.

“The missiles are not very old.

“The general purpose (of the Russian military) is still the downsizing (of the nuclear arsenal), but this will not happen as quickly as we thought two years ago.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.