Historic US-Russian agreement on nuclear weapons

[Soylent Brice]

April 1, 2009

The US and Russia have today agreed to allow nuclear weapons inspections between the two top nuclear powers to continue. Without the breakthrough agreement, either country would effectively have been free to resume nuclear proliferation at the end of the year.

"We agreed to pursue new and verifiable reductions in our strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process, beginning by replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new, legally-binding treaty," US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev declared in a joint statement in London, where they are attending the G20 summit of world leaders.

Official figures are not publicly available, but the Arms Control Association in Washington DC estimates that the US has at least 2200 "strategic" nuclear weapons deployed and Russia has between 2000 and 3000.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16884-historic-usrussian-agreement-on-nuclear-weapons.html