Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 59, July - August 2001

Documents & Sources

Tenth Anniversary of START I

'On the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of the Signing of START Treaty,' Russian Foreign Ministry Statement, Document 1426-31-07-2001, July 31, 2001.

"Today marks the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START Treaty) to which Russia, Byelorussia [Belarus], Kazakhstan and Ukraine - the states that are legal successors to the Soviet Union - and the United States of America are parties. It was signed in Moscow and came into force on December 5, 1994.

The START Treaty is at present the only international treaty under which real cuts of strategic offensive weapons are being made. Throughout the ten-year period it has played and

continues to play an important role in strengthening strategic stability and international security. In the course of compliance with the Treaty all the strategic nuclear weapons of the former USSR have been removed to the territory of Russia. Byelorussia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine as non-nuclear states have become parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The START Treaty envisages that by the end of this year - that is, upon the completion of the third and final stage of reductions - Russia and the US will have reduced the number of their strategic carriers to 1,600 and the warheads on them to 6,000 on each side.

A key factor and condition for the implementation of the START Treaty has been the existence of and compliance by the parties with the 1972 ABM Treaty. The parties to the START Treaty have carried out a large amount of work to liquidate strategic offensive weapons, to monitor compliance therewith, including by large-scale inspection activities and resolving the questions arising within the mechanism envisaged by the Treaty, the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission.

Taking into account the experience accumulated during the past decade, Russia comes out for further radical cuts of strategic weapons to 1,500 warheads for the Russian Federation and the United States of America by 2008. The corresponding initiatives and other measures to strengthen strategic stability and its legal-treaty basis were set forth in the Statement of the Russian President of November 13, 2000, and are being further elaborated."