Kommersant: "Russia and US ‘Reset’ START"
Talks with the Obama Administration begin in Moscow.
The first official Russian-American talks aimed at developing a new agreement on strategic weapons (START) will begin in Moscow tomorrow. The current START-1 treaty expires in December and, as Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama have agreed, the two nations must work out a new agreement in the remaining seven months.
Nevertheless, the chances that Russia and the US will be able to agree on a new document are growing slimmer by the day. Last week Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow intended to link Russian cooperation on the START treaty with American cooperation concerning that country's missile shield in Europe, a condition that Washington will likely find unacceptable.
The first meeting of the official US and Russian delegations charged with negotiating a new treaty to replace START-1 will take place at the Russian Foreign Ministry on Smolenskaya Square tomorrow. The Russian delegation will be led by Anatoly Antonov, director of the security and disarmament department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and the American delegation by Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, who was until recently the head of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. Other members of the American negotiating team include Robert Einhorn, formerly of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and Ellen Tauscher, a former Congressperson from California. Both Mr Einhorn and Ms Tauscher are now in charge of Russian affairs at the US Department of State. The American delegation will present its initial proposals for the future agreement at tomorrow's meeting.
It is expected that one point of contention will concern the limitations on warheads in storage. In early May, Rose Gottemoeller said that the United States was only prepared to consider restrictions on operationally deployed warheads and carriers. The Russians have traditionally demanded that stored warheads be reduced as well. This was repeatedly emphasised, for example, by Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who met with American Vice President Joe Biden last February in Munich. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a week ago that Moscow would not categorically reject the American position. "The main thing is to have an agreement that covers all warheads and all carriers," said the Russian Foreign Minister while returning from the United States after a visit with Barack Obama and American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"As for warheads in storage," he continued, "it is important to understand how they will be accounted for. In short, we await the American proposal, which we will then analyse and judge most of all according to the criterion of equal security."
According to the plan, the two negotiating teams must work out some general foundations before Barack Obama's July 6 arrival in Moscow, because the preparation of the treaty, according to Mr Lavrov, will be the main issue discussed by the two Presidents. However, although the diplomats will most likely be able to present an agreement to the heads of state by July 6, drafting the full text of the new treaty by December will be extremely difficult. Technical problems are sure to arise due to the fact that the agreement must be approved not only by the two country's foreign affairs agencies, but also by their defence establishments. In the opinion of Kommersant's sources, who are close to the negotiations, this may take a long time. The American diplomats, for example, have expressed misgivings because most of the experienced disarmament negotiators have left the Russian Defence Ministry in recent years.
Nevertheless, it is not the technical but the political differences between Russia and the United States that may be the biggest obstacle. Thus, during his visit to Japan, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that "Russia will of course link the issues of missile defence with everything that is related to the issue, and to strategic offensive weapons. As far as we understand, the new United States Administration has not yet made up its mind about the future missile defence system, at least in Europe. But it is obvious that the offensive and defensive parts of the strategic forces are closely and inseparably interconnected. This has always been the case, and this has been the starting premise. That is why the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed in its time."
Bringing the missile defence shield into the discussion may mean that the conclusion of a new START treaty would become practically impossible unless the American Administration decides to revise its plans of deploying a missile shield in Europe. Meanwhile, the representatives of Barack Obama's team have constantly stressed that the fate of the American missile defence in Eastern Europe hinges on how effective the new system will turn out to be.
For example, Ellen Tauscher told Kommersant that the future of the missile defence in Europe does not depend on political issues and would not be the subject of Russian-American negotiations. In any case, connecting START with the missile defence issue will certainly prolong the negotiations and diminish the chances of meeting the December deadline.
That having been said, both Moscow and Washington have a great deal at stake in the START discussions as far as image is concerned, because a successful agreement could be the first proof that the "reset" of the Russian-US relations is working. If the document is not agreed upon in time, it would mean that no real "reset" has taken place.
Kommersant's sources at the Foreign Ministry note that Moscow has been increasingly disappointed with the Barack Obama Administration in recent months, as the latter has not yet shown that it is ready to reconsider all of its predecessors' positions, including on the issue of missile defence. This means that the upcoming meeting of the two Presidents in July could be the last public demonstration of the "reset" before Russia and the US slide back into the Cold War.
By Mikhail Zygar
