U.S., U.K. Governments Dispute Report that U.S. Sold Out U.K. During START Negotiations

[Pirate Smile]

Source: ABC News

Both the U.S. and British governments disputed on Saturday a London Telegraph report asserting that the "U.S. secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty."

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley called the report "nonsense," saying the information sharing about U.S. transfers of nuclear weapons to the U.K. dates back to the original START treaty, an assertion backed up by the White House and British government officials.

-snip-
Crowley emailed ABC News that "Under the 1991 START Treaty, the U.S. agreed to notify Russia of specific nuclear cooperation with the United Kingdom, such as the transfer of SLBM's to the U.K., or their maintenance or modernization. This is under an existing pattern of cooperation throughout that treaty and is expected to continue under New START. We simply carried forward and updated this notification procedure to the new treaty. There was no secret agreement and no compromise of the U.K.'s independent nuclear deterrent."

A knowledgeable source with the British government, speaking anonymously because his government has a policy of not commenting on Wikileaks, says his understanding of the policy conforms with that asserted by the State Department.



Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/02/us-uk-governments-dispute-report-that-us-sold-uk-out-during-start-negotiations.html

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Never buy garbage spewed by RW newspapers or websites both local and international. Seems obvious.

[Pirate Smile]

1. An LBN thread that smears the Obama Administration gets 38 recs on the Greatest Page but an article

with both the UK & USA saying it is bogus just sinks like a stone.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4721990

[JDPriestly]

2. I K&R'd this thread.

And I posted yesterday that I believed that Britain knew about this.

[Pirate Smile]

3. Thanks.

[Ghost Dog]

4. LBN threads don't sink so rapidly, if you look in the right place.

Thanks for this. k&r.

[Pirate Smile]

5. That's true.

[cheapdate]

6. This is an utter distortion of the truth.

There is no "secret" agreement.

The new START treaty requires each party to notify the other when nuclear weapons are transferred to third parties. The requirement is found in the Annex on Notifications on page 12, "NOTIFICATION OF TRANSFER OF ITEMS TO OR FROM A THIRD STATE."

The following information is required.

A. TYPE, CATEGORY (AND VARIANT OR VERSION, IF APPLICABLE)
OF ITEM:
B. NUMBER OF ITEMS: XXXX
C. UNIQUE IDENTIFIER
D. DATE OF TRANSFER: DD-MMM-YYYY
E. TRANSFER LOCATION:

That's all. There's no "secret agreement," just a plain straightforward notifcation requirement that is in the interest of the U.S. and Russia.

The full text of the treaty and the Annex on Notification is linked at Richard Lugar's website:

http://lugar.senate.gov/issues/start/

These sensational "headlines" that talk about "secret agreements" are highly misleading and must be borne either through ignorance or intentional deception, take your pick.

[Ghost Dog]

8. Exactly. So there's not obviously anything new here.

... Although, we appear to be referring to nuclear-capable delivery systems such as missile technology here, such as Trident missiles which are manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the United States, with some transferred to UK and some held in a common pool at the Strategic Weapons facility in Georgia in the United States, where the missiles are also periodically serviced.

The UK's nuclear warheads, on the other hand, are built at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK. These are presumably not directly covered under the bilateral US-Russia START.

Ref:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4438392.stm

The new START is summarized by the BBC thus:

The New Start treaty limits each side to no more than 800 deployed nuclear warhead delivery systems including bombers, missile launchers and nuclear submarines - a cut of about 50%.

It limits each side to 1,550 deployed warheads.

It will also allow each side to visually inspect the other's nuclear capability, with the aim of verifying how many warheads each missile carries.

/... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12373665

[cheapdate]

7. The treaty covers nuclear weapons manufactured

by the United States and by Russia. The United States manufactures the U.K.'s nuclear weapons and so under the treaty notification is required when the weapons are transferred to the U.K., just as Russia most provide notification if they transfer weapons to Azerbaijan, or some other country.

The reporting seems to have started with an irresponsible article in the Telegraph that states the facts in a highly misleading way and confuses the issue even more by mixing in irrelevant Wikileaks.

[treestar]

9. K&R

:kick:

[LeftishBrit]

10. k&r

The Telegraph, which used to at least be a reliable news source if its comment sections were dire, has gone rapidly downhill in the last two or three years. I would certainly not trust its 'scoops', unless independently confirmed.