Negotiations with Russia over both countries nuclear weapons stockpiles is said to be rapping up "fairly quickly", United States.
Numerous statements by both unnamed Kremlin officials and Wall Street Journal reports claim that the both sides have reached an "agreement in principle" on replacing the Cold War-era Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with a new signed agreement this spring. But State Department spokesman Philip Crowley declined to confirm the remarks.
START helped to establish deep cuts in both countries nuclear arsenals and was seen as a breakthrough in peace negotiations between the two superpowers at the height of the Cold War.
The latest negotiations, which according to the START treaty should have been complete by December 2009, has encountered a number of stumbling blocks. It is said that a number of high ranting US officials visited Moscow to overcome these issues. Demonstrating the US willingness to have a new transparent verification process in place at all missile production plants and an exchange of quantitative data related to nuclear weapons and their deployment.
The establishment of a followup agreement to START is important in the US's greater attempts to negotiate nuclear deals and de-escalation with other countries such as Iran and North Korea. Without their own agreement, Washington has very little clout in dictating the nuclear terms of other countries.
The post-START treaty also comes in the wake of an announced US missile shield to be deployed in Romania. There is no way of telling whether these two diplomatic developments are hampering the negotiations.
Claims of the completion of the nuclear treaty may be well exaggerated, since both countries would need to ratify them in their respective senates. There could be a long delay in the US and Russia over ratification of the treaty and may well demand changes. April may be ambitious since they had all of 2009 to conclude basic negotiations and failed.
With sources from Spacedaily
