The new
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty must be approved by the U.S. Senate, and the
administration is pushing for its ratification during the current lame-duck
session rather than delay consideration until the new Congress is seated. But
some Republicans say the treaty should be delayed past the lame-duck session
because of “unresolved issues.”
“It
is a national security imperative that the United States ratify the START
treaty this year,” Obama said.
“If
we ratify this treaty, we’re going to have a verification regime in place to
track Russia’s strategic
nuclear weapons, including U.S.
inspectors on the ground,” he said. “If we don’t, then we don’t have
a verification regime -– no inspectors, no insights into Russia’s
strategic arsenal, no framework for cooperation between the world’s two nuclear
superpowers. As Ronald Reagan said, we have to trust, but we also have to
verify. In order for us to verify, we’ve got to have a treaty.”
The two
countries have been without a strategic arms treaty for nearly a year.
The
president also said he’s “prepared to go the extra mile” by
supporting $80 billion for modernizing U.S. nuclear stockpiles in next
decade and $4.1 billion in next five years.
The White
House agenda said participants in the meeting included Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton; Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass; Sen.
Richard Lugar, R-Ind.; former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, James
Baker and Henry Kissinger; former Defense Secretaries William Cohen
and William Perry; former national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft; Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright, and former Sen.
Sam Nunn.
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