The US must allay Russian concerns over its planned anti-missile system in Europe if the two sides are to achieve a breakthrough on cutting nuclear weapons, the Russian foreign minister said yesterday.
US President Barack Obama and his counterpart, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, last month agreed to pursue a deal on cutting nuclear weapons that would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which will expire in December.
The world’s two biggest nuclear powers began formal talks on Tuesday to find a replacement for START and diplomats hope progress can be made before Obama and Medvedev meet in Moscow from July 6 through July 8.
But the talks are complicated by Washington’s anti-missile plan.
It is considering stationing elements of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic to intercept rockets fired from what it regards as rogue states, such as Iran.
Russia sees this as upsetting the strategic balance and threatening its own security.
“The final product of the negotiations must of course be a step forward from the current system of limits and cuts,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at the 19th century mansion in central Moscow where talks on the successor to START continued yesterday.
“The fundamental principle of an agreement must be equal security for both sides and the preservation of strategic parity. This of course cannot be ensured without taking into account the situation with anti-missile defense,” Lavrov said.
He said the talks should also take account of any plans for space-based missiles and the development of highly destructive non-nuclear weapons.
Finding a deal could herald a thaw in relations between the Cold War foes after bitter arguments under former US president George W. Bush over missile defense, NATO expansion and August’s war between Russia and Georgia.
Obama said last month that the US would go ahead with the anti-missile system if Washington thought there was a continued threat from Iran.
The negotiators face tight pressure to work through scores of complicated technical issues — including differences over how to count nuclear weapons and ensure compliance — before the Dec. 5 deadline for replacing START.
“The biggest problem on the path to bettering US-Russian relations is the colossal level of political mistrust,” said Nikolai Zlobin, the head of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the World Security Institute in Washington.
“Even if it is possible to someday overcome this mistrust, it won’t happen soon,” he wrote in the Russian state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
But Zlobin said that it was imperative for both countries to reach a deal on the treaty, which led to substantial cuts in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals after its signing in 1991 and is seen as a conerstone of strategic arms control efforts.
“They cannot afford not to reach an agreement, because that would mean not only the failure of their effort to reset bilateral relations, but serve an irreparable blow for global security,” he wrote.
The US negotiating team in Moscow is led by Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller while the Russian team is headed by Anatoly Antonov, head of the foreign ministry department for security and disarmament.
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