U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plan next month to formally request that their nations' legislatures ratify a nuclear arms control treaty signed in early April.

The successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty would obligate the two former Cold War adversaries to both lower their respective strategic arsenals to 1,550 fielded nuclear warheads and to limit their deployed delivery vehicles -- missiles, submarines and bombers -- to 700, with another 100 permitted in reserve. Under a 2002 pact, Moscow and Washington had until 2012 to reduce their deployed strategic stockpiles to a maximum of 2,200 weapons each.

"We have received signals from the White House and from the Kremlin that the treaty will be submitted to the national parliaments in the first half of May," ITAR-Tass quoted Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Russian Federation Council's international affairs committee, as saying. "Taking into account the fact that the work is already being carried out we hope that both countries' parliamentarians will not create any artificial obstacles to the discussion of this document and all formal procedures to be passed by it," he said.

The pact should be delivered with its full complement of accompanying technical annexes, said Margelov, who took part in a meeting of Federation Council and U.S. Senate members on the agreement's ratification (see GSN, March 30; ITAR-Tass, April 21).

Russia stressed that its future arms control talks with the United States must address "the colossal imbalance in offensive weapons" between the sides, Interfax reported yesterday.

"Deployment of weapons in space must be banned and serious efforts must be made to settle regional conflicts, which upsets stability globally," according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

"Intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-based ballistic missiles must not be fitted with conventional warheads. If they are the situation will be destabilized to a no smaller degree," he told Russia Today, referring to a U.S. plan to place non-nuclear warheads on some of its long-range missiles (see GSN, March 19).

The pact signed this month would not limit U.S. missile defense plans, but Washington and Moscow should both avoid excessive deployments of those systems, Ryabkov said. "Since the new treaty deals with strategic offensive weapons, we did not even count on using it to curb our partners' strategic defensive means," the lawmaker said (Interfax I, April 20).

Russia's top military official is expected to meet with U.S. officials in Washington, where he plans to address implementation of the pending treaty as well as issues concerning battlefield nuclear weapons, the U.S. missile defense system and Obama administration plans to deploy a missile shield in Europe.

"Until now the American side has been claiming that such a [European] system is needed as defense against the Iranian missile threat, but we disagree with this point and are suggesting that we and the U.S. carry though some joint work to analyze risks and threats and only then decide on how to counteract them," Russian General Staff chief Gen. Nikolai Makarov said (see related GSN story, today).

Makarov repeated Moscow's call for the United States to withdraw nonstrategic nuclear weapons fielded at bases in Europe. "Before one discusses prospects for reductions of those weapons, one should first take them onto the territory of the countries they belong to," he said (Interfax II, April 20).

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