- (AFP) - Russia tore up the START II treaty, dismissing
the 1993 nuclear arms reductions pact as irrelevant after the United States
decided to forge ahead with plans to build a missile defense shield.
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- "Russia sees no conditions in which the START II
treaty can take effect and no longer feels bound under international law"
to observe its terms, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
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- The move came a day after US President George W. Bush
marked Washington's formal withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
by announcing that he was moving ahead with plans to deploy a missile defence
system.
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- On Saturday work is to begin on the missile shield, with
a ground breaking ceremony on silos for six interceptor missiles at Fort
Greely, Alaska. It is due to be completed by September 2004.
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- The Russian move to scrap the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty was not expected to have an impact on the nuclear balance as it
has to a great extent been superseded by a new arms cuts agreement signed
only three weeks ago.
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- Under that accord signed by Bush and President Vladimir
Putin in Moscow on May 24, Russia and the United States agreed to slash
their nuclear arsenals by 2012 to no more than 2,200 deployed warheads,
down from the current level of 6,000 each.
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- The START II treaty, signed in January 1993 by Boris
Yeltsin and George Bush, provided for a two-thirds reduction in the two
countries' nuclear arsenals to no more than 3,500 for the United States
and 3,000 for Russia.
-
- Further protocols were added to the treaty in New York
in September 1997.
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- Ratified by the United States in 1996 and by Russia in
May 2000, the treaty had originally been due to take effect at the end
of 2003 but had been widely regarded as overtaken by events following the
US decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty.
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- In its statement, the foreign ministry underscored the
US failure to ratify the New York agreements and its June 13 pull-out of
ABM that it said had invalidated " that cornerstone of strategic stability
for three decades."
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- Russian analysts have been predicting for several months
that START II would fall by the wayside.
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- Ivan Safranchuk, of the Defence Information Centre, said
it had been obvious for at least a month that a declaration of this kind
was coming.
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- "The START II treaty has been dead in the water
for at least two or three years, and its implementation was always a non-starter,"
he told AFP.
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- "It was logical to make this statement, but obviously
the timing was not an accident.
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- "The US withdrawal from the ABM treaty meant that
even in theory START II could not come into effect, as the ratification
text passed by the State Duma (lower house) set as a condition the US ratification
of the New York protocol relating to anti-missile defence. And now the
ABM treaty doesn't exist any more," he said.
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- Putin has said on several occasions that Russia would
withdraw from START II if Washington withdrew from the ABM treaty, "and
he is simply keeping his promise," Safranchuk said.
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