RUSSIA:The United States and Russia have agreed to reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons to "the lowest possible" level but stopped short of setting precise targets for disarmament.
The agreement came as president George Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin ended a two-day meeting at the Bush family retreat in Maine.
Officials on both sides said that much work remained to be done before new limits on long-range nuclear warheads but US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington and Moscow wanted to draw up a new treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) which expires in 2009.
"The United States and Russia reiterate their intention to carry out strategic offensive reductions to the lowest possible level consistent with their national security requirements and alliance commitments. To this end, ministers discussed development of a post-START arrangement to provide continuity and predictability regarding strategic offensive forces," a joint statement said.
In 2002, Mr Bush and Mr Putin signed a treaty in Moscow, which expires in December 2012, limiting operationally deployed warheads on each side to between 1,700 and 2,000. Last January, Russia said it still had 4,162 strategic warheads, and the US said it had 5,866. Russia has been upgrading its nuclear weapons capability in recent months after years of under funding and announced yesterday that it had conducted its second successful test of rocket technology in a month. A sea based ballistic missile was fired from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi in Russia's White Sea and hit its Pacific target about 4,200 miles east of Moscow.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Kislyak said that START may have outlived its usefulness and suggested that a new agreement was called for.
"It doesn't mean that we necessarily need to continue the treaty as it stands today, because a lot of things that are provided for in the treaty have been already completed," he said. In a joint declaration yesterday, Mr Bush and Mr Putin said they would play an active role in encouraging the peaceful use of nuclear energy, as long as it did not lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Dr Rice and Mr Lavrov signed a bilateral agreement yesterday for cooperation in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy. "We share the view that this agreement will provide an essential basis for the expansion of Russian-US cooperation in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy and expect this document to be signed and brought into force in accordance with existing legal requirements," Mr Bush and Mr Putin said.
Mr Bush claimed that he and Mr Putin agreed to send a "common message" to Iran over its nuclear programme but there was no immediate sign that Moscow had agreed to support the US in pressing for tougher UN sanctions on Tehran.