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U.S.-Russian negotiators weigh arms-cut prospects |
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April 19, 2000
GENEVA, APR 18 (AP) - U.S. and Russian arms negotiators held more meetings Tuesday as the two countries sought to lay the groundwork for further strategic arms cuts, officials said.
U.S. officials refused to comment on a first round of talks Monday on START III, which would cut nuclear arsenals even further.
But the efforts were clearly receiving top-level attention from Russian and U.S. leaders.
"Arms control will be an important issue," said White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart in announcing Monday that President Bill Clinton will be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 4-5.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will be in the United States on Sunday for meetings on arms control. The upper house of the Russian parliament is expected to finish ratification of START II on Wednesday.
Putin, who pushed for ratification, said Monday in London that Russian fulfillment of the treaty was contingent on U.S. adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Jozef Goldblat, a widely published disarmament expert based in Geneva, said Russian ratification was well-timed to shift attention to the United States at the five-year review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty starting Monday in New York.
"The ball is in the American court" after years of Russian inactivity, Goldblat told The Associated Press.
START II, concluded in 1993, would halve U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 3,000-3,500 warheads each.
The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty four years ago, but still must approve a 1997 amendment to the accords giving Russia more time to comply.
In ratifying the treaty and the amendment, Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, last week attached conditions that could cause problems in the U.S. Senate, said Patricia Lewis, director of the Geneva-based U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research.
She noted the Russian demand that the United States adhere to the ABM treaty and the restrictions on the deployment of weapons in the new NATO countries of Eastern Europe.
Nonetheless, Lewis said, Russian ratification means "there's now an opening" in arms talks involving other nations that have been stymied since the 1996 approval of the nuclear test ban treaty.
Proposals for further global treaties include bans on the production of materials to make nuclear bombs and the militarization of outer space.
Conducting the two days of talks in Geneva were Yuri Kapralov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's arms control department, and John Holum, the Clinton administration's key disarmament specialist.
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