Pinning Down a Disarmament Deal

Posted on Mar 26, 2010

nps.gov

President George H.W. Bush, seated at left, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ink the original START deal in 1991.

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have agreed on final terms for a new nuclear arms reduction agreement, a successor to the START treaty of 1991. The new deal will remove about a third of the warheads deployed by each country.

Even with the new reductions, the two countries will have about 3,000 nuclear-tipped missiles between them, mostly pointed at each other. —JCL

Al-Jazeera English:

Barack Obama, the US president, and Dmitry Medvedev, his Russian counterpart, have finalised the terms of a new nuclear arms reduction agreement.

The two leaders approved the deal for a successor to the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which will cut the amount of missiles deployed by both countries by one third, following a telephone conversation on Friday.

Speaking from the White House, Obama said: “With this agreement, the United States and Russia, the two largest nuclear powers in the world, also send a clear signal that we intend to lead.

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