US-Russia talks

Russia and the United States have begun a second round of talks in Geneva aimed at devising a follow-on treaty for START I. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in 1991 by the former Cold War powers to make deep cuts in their own nuclear weapons arsenals. It expires in December but still leaves the two powers heavily armed.

As if to underscore the ever-present need to reign in proliferation, nuclear outsider North Korea has been told by Southeast Asian leaders attending a two-day summit in South Korea to cease its "provocative" acts. Pyongyang replied promptly on Monday, saying it would "strengthen its nuclear deterrent." Early last week, North Korea defied United Nations resolutions by staging an underground nuclear test, its second such detonation since 2006, and renouncing the armistice that ended the war on the Korean peninsula in 1953. On Friday, the North fired a short-range missile, its sixth in a week, drawing more international condemnation.

South Korea says North preparing missile

In what could be a further escalation, South Korea's defense ministry says the North has moved a long-range missile to its launch base at Dongchang-ri, on North Korea's west coast, near China. According to South Korean media, including the news agency Yonghap and the daily newspaper JoongAng libo, South Korean intelligence officials say the Taepodong-2 missile is an "intercontinental" rocket that potentially could reach Alaska. They say launch preparations could take one to two more weeks.

Experts add, however, that North Korea has not yet mastered the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to mount on such a missile. In April, North Korea drew strong protests when it test fired a similar long-range rocket in the direction of Japan.

Visiting Manila, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said North Korea's intentions are "not clear." Gates said he hoped a high-level US talks with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea would help defuse tensions. Visiting Singapore at the weekend, Gates had said Pyongyang's acts could spark an arms race with serious consequences for Asia.

Geneva START talks behind closed doors

The START arms reduction talks in Geneva are the second encounter involving US and Russian envoys since US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dimitri Medvedev met at the G-20 summit in London in April and agreed to strive for further reductions. Russian diplomats say the presidents will unveil the first results of the START consultations at their planned summit in Moscow in early July. Meantime, both sides have sworn confidentiality. Diplomats close to the Geneva talks, spread over three days, say it is being held behind closed doors at Russia's mission. Progress is not expected to be swift.

Recent Russian-US relations have been troubled by tensions over the pro-Western former Soviet republic of Georgia and Russia's objections to Washington's plan to site a US anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, ostensibly to counter a threat from Iran.

Russian military analyst Alexander Goltz says the START negotiations will help Russia to restore its "status as a world power." Another analyst Evgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation says President Obama "needs a result" to demonstrate progress after the 'reset' in US-Russian relations declared early this year by his vice-president Joseph Biden. In April while visiting Prague, Obama underscored his stance by saying his long-term goal was to create a "world without nuclear weapons."

Deep cuts but arsenals still large

START I was signed in 1991 – shortly after the fall of Europe's Iron Curtain - by former US president George H. Bush senior and the-then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. It set up a system of bilateral inspections and stipulated that neither side could deploy more than 6,000 warheads and no more than 1,600 strategic delivery vehicles, including long-rang missiles, submarines and bomber aircraft.

That goal was reached by 2001, still leaving both powers holding 90 percent of the world's arsenals.

According to the US State Department, at the beginning of January the United States had 550 intercontinental ballistic missiles ready for use; Russia had 469 such missiles, but with more warheads per missile. Russia does not publish its own figures. In terms of warheads, the US said Russia held 3,909 devices while the US military had 5,576.

At the London summit in April, Obama and Medvedev pointed out that another treaty signed in 2002, known as SORT or the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty requires each power's stockpile to be trimmed to a ceiling of between 1,700 - 2,200 nuclear warheads. Unlike START, however, it does not provide for verification systems.

Thaw raises hopes for Non-Proliferation Treaty review

If a follow-on treaty supercedes START, stipulating further US and Russian cuts, it could add fresh impulse to plans to revise the much wider Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at a United Nations review conference next year. Last Friday, the permanent Security Council members, all nuclear powers, including China, France and Britain, endorsed a review and an ambitious agenda under an Algerian-mediated compromise.

That breakthrough at the long-running 65-member Conference on Disarmament at the UN's European offices in Geneva ended more than a decade of deadlock. At similar talks in 2005 not even an agenda was agreed.

ipj/dpa/Reuters/afp

Editor: Trinity Hartman