Press Release M-NAC- 2(2000)121 Report on Options for Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs), Verification, Non-Prolife- ration, Arms Control and Disarmament December 2000

2. Developments over the Last Decade in the Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons Environment 2.2. Nuclear Weapons 2.2.1. Bilateral and National Developments     2.2.1.1. US - Russia The United States and Russia are engaged in an important bilateral arms control process aimed at reducing significantly their strategic nuclear weapons. The START I Treaty, which entered into force in 1994, was the first treaty to actually reduce strategic offensive weapons. Once fully implemented, it will have reduced U.S. and Russian deployed strategic weapons from well over 10.000 to 6.000 held by each side. Since 1988, the U.S. has dismantled more than 13,300 nuclear warheads and bombs, has eliminated more than a dozen different types of nuclear warheads, and has reduced its overall nuclear warhead stockpile by 59% - 80% of the U.S. non-strategic nuclear stockpile and 47% of the strategic stockpile. To date, the United States has eliminated over 900 strategic delivery vehicles. These delivery vehicles were attributed under the START Treaty with 4400 warheads. The delivery vehicle elimination total includes 478 ICBMs, 368 SLBMs, and 67 heavy bombers. In addition, approximately 234 delivery vehicles have been deactivated and await destruction by the Treaty's reduction deadline of December 5, 2001. The U.S. and the republics of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) remain on track to complete all Treaty mandated reductions by the December 5, 2001 deadline. The START II Treaty was signed in 1993 and ratified by the U.S. in 1996 and by Russia in 2000. Entry into force cannot occur until the U.S. ratifies the 1997 START II Protocol extending the Treaty's implementation deadline from 2003 to 2007 and certain other conditions attached to the Russian resolution of ratification are resolved. START II builds upon the START I Treaty, further reducing each side's deployed strategic weapons to between 3.000 and 3.500, and eliminating all land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying multiple warheads. Once START II has been implemented, the U.S. will have reduced its strategic nuclear forces by two thirds from peak Cold War levels. U.S. nuclear-armed strategic bombers are no longer on alert and the U.S. targets no country with its strategic nuclear forces on a day-to-day basis. U.S. ground forces and surface ships no longer have a nuclear capability and U.S. sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles are no longer deployed on any naval vessels. No nuclear weapons test explosions have been conducted since September 1992, and the U.S. has terminated production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The U.S. has permanently removed approximately 226 tonnes of HEU and plutonium from its nuclear stockpile and is taking steps to ensure that the material can never again be used for weapons purposes. This material will be made available for IAEA verification as soon as practicable. The U.S. will also seek to identify additional amounts of fissile material for irreversible removal from weapons programmes. Moreover, the U.S. has allocated more than $5 billion to Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan since 1992 to facilitate nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. In March 1997 in Helsinki, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to begin negotiations on a START III treaty that, for the first time, would include measures related to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads. Once implemented, the START III treaty would reduce the number of deployed U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads to a ceiling of 2.000 to 2.500 each, a U.S. reduction of approximately 80% from peak Cold War levels. The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972 and amended in 1974, permits each side to have one ABM system with 100 ABM launchers and 100 ABM interceptor missiles deployed at a single location on their respective territories. Russia currently maintains an operational ABM system armed with nuclear warheads around Moscow; the United States deactivated its ABM system in the mid-1970s and currently has no operational ABM system. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States initiated negotiations in 1993 to resolve the ABM Treaty succession issue and to distinguish between ABM systems and the Theatre Missile Defense (TMD) systems. In September 1997, the United States signed agreements with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine providing for succession to the ABM Treaty by those four states, and clarifying the demarcation between ABM systems, which are limited by the Treaty, and TMD systems, which are not limited by the Treaty per se. These agreements have not yet entered into force. In Cologne in June 1999, the Presidents of the United States and Russia affirmed their existing obligations under Article XIII of the ABM Treaty to consider possible changes in the strategic situation that have a bearing on the ABM Treaty and, as appropriate, possible proposals for further increasing the viability of this Treaty. The United States has proposed changes to the ABM Treaty needed to permit deployment of a limited National Missile Defense system. Since August 1999, several rounds of high-level U.S.-Russian discussions on both the ABM Treaty and START III have been conducted. The United States has kept NATO Allies informed of these discussions. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in December 1987 and entered into force in May 1988. It is of unlimited duration, providing for the elimination and permanent ban of an entire class of U.S. and Soviet intermediate- and shorter-range ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range from 500 to 5.500 kilometers. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the 12 successor states became party to the Treaty, but only four of them - Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Ukraine - participate with the U.S. in the INF inspections regime which will end on 31 May 2001. In the fall of 1991, U.S. President Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev announced two unilateral nuclear reduction initiatives. President Bush pledged, among other things, to destroy all U.S. nuclear artillery shells and short-range ballistic missile warheads and to withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. surface ships, attack submarines and land-based naval aircraft. Responding to the U.S. Presidential Nuclear Initiative (PNI), President Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would: eliminate all nuclear artillery munitions, nuclear warheads for tactical missiles, and nuclear mines; withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships, multipurpose submarines, and land-based naval aviation; eliminate a portion of the naval tactical nuclear weapons and store the rest in "central storage sites"; and withdraw nuclear warheads for air defence missiles, eliminate a portion of them, and concentrate the rest in "central bases". In January 1992, Russian President Yeltsin reaffirmed and expanded on Gorbachev's pledges. On 6 September 2000, U.S. President Clinton and Russian President Putin agreed on a Strategic Stability Co-operation Initiative as a constructive basis for strengthening trust between the two sides, and for further development of agreed measures to enhance strategic stability and to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, missiles and missile technologies world-wide. The United States and Russia have eliminated intermediate and shorter-range missiles mandated by the INF Treaty, and are close to completing the reductions required by December 2001 under the START I Treaty. They intend to seek early entry into force of the START II Treaty and its related Protocol, the 1997 agreements on ABM issues and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and to work towards the early realization of the 1997 Helsinki Joint Statement on Parameters on Future Reductions in Nuclear Forces (START III). The U.S. and Russia are also prepared to resume and expand co-operation in the area of TMD. Since 1995, the U.S. has signed the relevant protocols to the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. When combined with the Latin American Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty, this increases the number of Non-Nuclear Weapon States eligible for legally binding negative security assurances from all five nuclear weapon states to almost 100.