The heads of the countries discussed the new strategic arms reduction at their meeting in London and planned to meet in Geneva in late June and to start the talks on a new strategic arms reduction treaty. The previous treaty will expire on December 5, 2009.

The Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START 1) obliges Russia and the United States to reduce nuclear warheads to 6,000 and the delivery vehicles to 1,600. Such amount of warheads and delivery vehicles can be used only against each other, and not against the neighbour countries the Russian Foreign Ministry stated on Thursday. Thus the co-operation in this question can help the Russian – American relations that came worse during the last year.

The Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty obliges Russia and the United States to reduce nuclear warheads to 6,000 and their delivery vehicles to 1,600 each. In 2002 the last agreement on strategic offensive arms reduction was concluded in Moscow, known as the Moscow Treaty, order Russia and United States get rid of 700-2,200 warheads by December 2012.

The Russian delegation headed by Anatoly Antonov, director of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Security and Disarmament, met USA delegation on May 19-21 in Moscow, they sides described the results of the previous warheads reduction and described the results of their meeting as a success.

According to a report published by U.S.A. Russia had 3,909 nuclear warheads and 814 delivery vehicles, (ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers). The United States had 5,576 warheads and 1,198 delivery vehicles – said the report.The same report said the United States had 5,576 warheads and 1,198 delivery vehicles. Russian delegates also noticed that they expected Washington to agree not only to reduce the numbers of nuclear warheads, but also place limits on all existing kinds of delivery vehicles.

Some comments by the Arms Reductions Treaty are published in Russian newspapers and are discussed by the Russian society are the following:

1) It is well known that USA and Russia does not have enough confidence to believe the numbers of the nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles presented by each country. And there is no good technique to get the real numbers of the weapons. And if there is no precise numbers and no confidence – the sides can not talk about really arms reduction.

2) That is not a good time to come to the consensus about the arms reduction because of the very aggressive NATO expansion into the Russian neighbour countries. The instability in the world can be also caused by the arms reduction in Russia and on the other hand increasing of the weapon in USA.

3) There some other bad effects of Russia’s arms reduction. One of the is the appearance of pirates, well known all over the world. It happened when the amount of Russian and USA submarines reduced and they stopped the control of the World Ocean.

4) And the last one – of cause the arms reduction can be fruitful for the Russia - USA relations, when its real goal is not to live Russia outside the world geopolitics’ processes. But there are other powerful countries such as Southern Korea and China. They also should take part in such arm reductions. But it is evident that they does not hurry to do that. Sources:

    www.rian.ru

    www.newsru.ru

Ushakova Alexandra