Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said on Tuesday a pillar of the arms control system could fall if Washington and Moscow replace the landmark START nuclear arms reduction treaty with a less formal pact.
The START treaty, signed in 1991, set ceilings on the size of the Russian and US nuclear arsenals and became a symbol of the end of the Cold War. Washington has indicated it will not extend it in 2009 but wants to replace it with a pact that eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons curbs.
"I don't see a negotiating process actually happening," Gorbachev, who signed the START treaty with then-president George Bush, told a Harvard University forum entitled "Overcoming Nuclear Danger."
PHOTO: AP
The conference at the John F. Kennedy School of Government assembled dozens of experts from the US, Russia and other nations for discussions on minimizing the risks of nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.
Diplomatic analysts have said a US position on START reflects US President George W. Bush's practice of repudiating arms control as a means of curbing nuclear weapons while relying more on measures like export controls, interdiction and sanctions.
Russia has said the treaty should be replaced with a formal, binding pact, and not an informal arrangement.
Gorbachev said verifying and inspecting each country's nuclear arsenals was crucial.
"It is totally wrong to declare that this system is obsolete and unnecessary after the end of the Cold War," he said. "It is totally wrong."
Gorbachev also said another milestone arms control pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) which he signed with former US president Ronald Reagan in 1987, must be preserved.
In an interview, he said he disagrees with Russian President Vladimir Putin and others who have called the treaty outdated and suggested that Moscow should consider pulling out of it.
The treaty banned the entire class of medium-range missiles.
"All of these treaties constitute a system, a structure, that maintained a certain stability ... but this is something that should continue to work," Gorbachev said. "It's not some kind of scrap and it's not some kind of old goods to be sold."
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS