WASHINGTON: Less than a month before President Bush hopes to sign an agreement in Moscow cutting Russian and American nuclear arsenals, arms negotiators remain seriously divided on the nature of the reductions, with the Russians demanding a stronger commitment from the United States to destroy weapons removed from service. The Bush administration, however, is pressing for maximum flexibility - including the right to redeploy atomic weapons on short notice - while offering the Russians promises of advance warning and a clearer window on US activities.
The Russians complain that a deal that does not eliminate the weapons is hardly a deal at all. Negotiations are intensifying at a time when Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are intent on showing that Cold War enemies can become strategic partners. Bush could benefit from a smooth Moscow trip after several weeks of rough reviews of his foreign policy, while Putin wants to show skeptics in Russia that warmer relations with Washington will pay off.
Chief US negotiator John Bolton flew to Moscow this weekend for the second time in a week to meet with his Russian counterpart, Georgy Mamedov. He will return to Washington in time for discussions later this week between Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The presidential summit opens May 23.
There is a “reasonable chance” that a detailed arms agreement will be completed in time for the Bush trip, said one US official. A second US official agreed but called the Russian position on counting warheads a potential deal-breaker and predicted nothing will be certain until the eve of the summit, when decisions are finalized.
Bush and Putin agreed last year in Crawford, Texas, to reduce their nuclear weapons arsenals by about two-thirds by 2012, moving from 6,000 warheads to roughly 2,000. Initially, Bush preferred an informal arrangement with Putin, giving desired flexibility to the Pentagon and the US Strategic Command and averting a complicated treaty ratification battle on Capitol Hill.
But Bush changed course and agreed to sign what the administration labels a “legally binding” agreement when Putin said a verbal promise would not satisfy skeptics in Moscow, including Russian generals who don’t trust the United States. Such mistrust only grew in December when the administration, over Russian objections, withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
At issue are nuclear weapons that can be launched from land or sea or dropped from long-range bombers. Negotiators are working on rules to determine what would happen to the warheads and their delivery systems as the numbers were reduced, and how to build confidence that each side was doing what it had promised.
Differences between the Russians and Americans begin with how to count the warheads. In the final totals, the Americans want to count only the warheads actually deployed, whether in a missile silo or in a submarine or at an air base. The Russians want to count all the launch slots from which the United States could fire a missile.
If the US military removed all ballistic missiles from a Trident submarine and declared that the submarine would be refitted for other purposes, there would be no warheads counted in the final total under the American approach. Yet because the submarines would remain capable on short notice of reloading missiles, the Russians would count in the total as many warheads as the submarine could deliver.
The Russians want the Americans to dismantle weapons systems, while US negotiators have emphasized the expense and reduced deployment options that would result. The cost, under the Russian approach, of stripping ballistic missile launchers from four of the country’s 18 Trident submarines and adding Tomahawk cruise missile launchers would be $2 billion, by one estimate. “They like predictability,” one US official said of the Russians. “The freewheeling American style makes them nervous.”
US negotiators are telling the Russians that they can trust US promises and can verify that the accord is being honored. As talks have continued, the Americans have offered more inspection visits to more sites to satisfy the Russians. The Bush administration has announced that it intends to keep many of the decommissioned missiles, warheads and bombs in reserve and expects to be able to redeploy weapons within weeks of notifying the Russians. Also either party would be permitted to withdraw unilaterally from the agreement with six months’ notice.
US officials counter that both sides would benefit from deployment pledges and monitoring provisions. The US has told Russia that open-ended pledges are not meant to target the Russians, although Russia maintains a nuclear force far larger than that of any other nation. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.