U.S., Russia Set Arms Treaty Goals

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Obama and Russian President Medvedev meet at the Kremlin. The White House appears to be trying to boost Mr. Medvedev, limiting attention to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

MOSCOW – U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have signed what they call a "joint understanding" to negotiate a new arms control treaty that would set substantially lower levels of nuclear warheads for both countries.

The deal would replace a nuclear arms treaty that expires in December.

Meeting in Moscow, the two presidents hailed their new approach on arms control. They set a goal of negotiating new limits of between 1,500 and 1,675 deployed strategic warheads. That compares with a current limit of between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.

They also said their negotiators would work out new limits on the bombers, land-based missiles and submarine-based missiles that carry such warheads. The new limit on those vehicles would be between 500 and 1,100. The current limit is 1,600.

The deal sets up tough talks on warhead launch systems and verification procedures ahead of the Dec. 5 deadline, when the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires.

Obama In Tough Summit With Russian Leaders

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U.S. President Barack Obama flew through the night to reach Russia, where he faces a tough two-day summit over a variety of defense-related issues with top Russian leaders.

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• Joint statement from the U.S. and Russia

The Cold War imagery of two nuclear powers negotiating arms control suits the Kremlin by thrusting Moscow back to prominence on the world stage, but Mr. Obama has a stake in the talks as well. Completing a new strategic arms treaty is the first small step in a far broader arms control agenda that he believes will further isolate North Korea and Iran.

U.S. negotiators hope to turn immediately to a more ambitious treaty with Russia reducing nondeployed strategic warheads and battlefield "tactical" nuclear weapons. Another effort is seeking an international ban on fissile materials, and the president is likely to submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate some time next year.

All of that would precede a major United Nations conference to update and toughen the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The White House appears to be trying to boost Mr. Medvedev as the more progressive and forward-thinking of Russia's leaders, limiting attention to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that the prime minister is widely viewed to be the more powerful partner in Russia's ruling tandem. After four hours of talks with Mr. Medvedev on Monday, Barack and Michelle Obama will dine with Mr. Medvedev and his wife Monday night. An additional session with Mr. Medvedev was added for Tuesday, after a one-hour breakfast at Mr. Putin's Moscow dacha.

Associated Press

Russia's President Medvedev, left, welcomes Barack Obama to the Kremlin.

For his part, Mr. Putin has scheduled his own event Tuesday, a business deal-signing ceremony, and invited cameras to grab some of the spotlight.

Wading into murky Kremlin politics is a risky gambit that could backfire, analysts said. Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says any attempt to play up perceived splits will not work. "Obama should have no illusions that he can do anything in Moscow to empower Medvedev," he said. "There's no daylight between them."

Outside the talks with Messrs. Medvedev and Putin, the U.S. president's schedule focuses on meetings with civil-society and opposition leaders, including Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who's a fierce critic of the Kremlin.

For arms control negotiators, a sticking point remains over how to count U.S. submarines and bombers that have either been converted to non-nuclear use or mothballed. Four U.S. Trident submarines with 48 missile tubes and the entire B-1 bomber fleet have been reconfigured to launch conventional bombs and missiles. The U.S. considers dozens of B-52 bombers that once carried nuclear weapons as unable to fly, but they are not destroyed.

Russian negotiators want all those systems counted under the limit of nuclear weapons launch vehicles in the new treaty, according to Mr. Samore, the White House official. U.S. negotiators say that either means the new treaty has a very high limit on warhead launchers – not the public relations image either are looking for – or the Russians accept that these "phantom" converted or mothballed delivery systems don't count, something the Russians oppose.

The Russians are continuing to say they cannot reach a final agreement on a new treaty if the U.S. insists on deploying missile defense systems on Poland and the Czech Republic. U.S. negotiators say a decision on that deployment will come this fall, based on technical, not diplomatic, considerations. They say the Russian position is mostly posturing ahead of Mr. Obama's visit and shouldn't affect the chances for agreeing on new talks.

But Russian mistrust of Washington is high after years of what the Kremlin sees as failure by the U.S. to follow through on promises. As a result, they're pushing for public, binding assurances on missile defense, which the Kremlin views as a threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent.

Answering written questions from the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Mr. Obama dismissed that, saying "that kind of thinking is simply a legacy of the Cold War."