A new start in sight?
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As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares for a two-day visit to Moscow this week to try to finalise a replacement to the START nuclear treaty, a senior Russian politican has put a potential spanner in the works by warning parliament could veto a deal.
Mrs Clinton is due to arrive in Moscow on 18 March for a meeting of the Middle East Quartet and also talks on nuclear arms reduction with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The need for a new treaty to replace the START-1, which expired in December 2009, has now become pressing. Secretary Clinton said on the eve of her visit that she expects a new US-Russia arms reduction treaty to be signed soon.
“I am optimistic that we’ll be able to complete this agreement soon”, Clinton told Russian magazine “The New Times”. “It’s a technically very complex treaty to accomplish. We share an interest in making real reductions in our strategic arsenals, and that is the most important point”, she said.
Today, however, Russia's Parliament Speaker Boris Gryzlov stated that the lower house would veto any deal unless it was linked to the controversial US plans for missile defence bases in Europe - which Moscow strongly opposes.
Given that Gryzlov is known for sticking to the official line - at least the one dictated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - and that analysts believe European missile defence has been the main sticking point in US-Russian negotiations, this does not bode well for Mrs Clinton.
Mr Gryzlov's announcement today is at odds with reports of a telephone conversation on 13 March between the Russia and US presidents, who expressed satisfaction over a “high level of consensus” on the main elements of the new pact.
