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US accelerates nuclear stockpile cuts: White House
Washington (AFP) Dec 18, 2007 The United States has accelerated the scrapping of its nuclear weapons, approving a "significant reduction" in the stockpile by the end of the year, the White House said Tuesday. "The president has approved a significant reduction in the US nuclear weapons stockpile to take effect by the end of 2007," following a major reduction plan first announced in 2004, a White House statement said. "As a result, the US nuclear stockpile will be less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War," said the statement, from spokeswoman Dana Perino. John Broehm, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the body tasked with dismantling the decommissioned weapons, told AFP the NNSA was on track to meet a target of halving the stockpile, set in 2004. After Bush set this self-imposed target, the NNSA managed to dismantle the arms at a much faster rate, Broehm explained. "That kind of effort over the last few years allowed us to meet the president's goals five years early ... by the end of this year, which will enable us to further reduce the stockpile by another 15 percent" by 2012, Broehm said. Bush's decision on Tuesday would remove even more weapons from the list of stockpiled nuclear weapons, allocating them to be dismantled, he said. The NNSA would not state the number of nuclear warheads in the stockpile since the information is classified. A 2002 arms control agreement with Russia committed the United States to restrict its "operationally deployed" nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the year 2012, Broehm said. Bush then in 2004 unilaterally adopted the wider target of reducing the entire stockpile by half, including weapons not ready to be deployed. "We are reducing our nuclear weapons stockpile to the lowest level consistent with America's national security and our commitments to our friends and allies," the White House statement said. Robert Norris, an expert at the Natural Defense Resource Council, a research group on environmental issues and disarmament, said the 2004 target would leave the United States with a stockpile of some 5,400 nuclear warheads. Norris told AFP Tuesday's move by Bush was "interesting and significant." "It's a very sensible thing to do," added John Pike, an analyst who directs the security monitoring group GlobalSecurity.org. "Any nuclear weapon is ... subject to accidental detonation or theft by terrorists." Referring to the Bush administration, he added: "I think that this is a reasonably easy thing for them to do to look like good guys ... In terms of America's capacity to incinerate all of our enemies on 15 minutes' notice, this does not alter that." Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com Learn about missile defense at SpaceWar.com All about missiles at SpaceWar.com Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com
Outside View: The future of INF 
Moscow (UPI) Dec 18, 2007 Twenty years ago, on Dec. 8, 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Washington. It was the first-ever treaty on reducing available arsenals. |
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