Gottemoeller: New START Will "Definitively Strengthen U.S. National Security"

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Tuesday, April 27, 2010:

Remarks at the Arms Control Association's Annual Meeting - Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, U.S. Department of State [link]

• Twelve months later, the New START Treaty and its Protocol were completed and the Presidents signed both at Prague on April 8. It was a thrill to witness the signing ceremony, an event which signified not only the completion of the negotiation but the launch of the critical phase of work that lies ahead.
• Within the coming weeks, the Treaty, Protocol, Annexes and associated documents will be submitted formally to the United States Senate. I believe there is every reason for the Senate to provide its advice and consent to ratification of the New START Treaty.
• The Treaty will ensure and maintain the strategic balance between the United States and Russia at lower, verifiable weapons levels, appropriate to the current security environment. It will promote strategic stability by ensuring transparency and predictability regarding U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces over the life of the Treaty. It will definitively strengthen U.S. national security.
• With the New START Treaty, we are setting the stage for further arms reductions. As we say in the Preamble to the Treaty, we see it as providing new impetus to the step-by-step process of reducing and limiting nuclear arms, with a view to expanding this process in the future to a multilateral approach.  We also will seek to include non-strategic and non-deployed weapons in future reductions. Such steps would truly take arms control into a new era.

Medvedev Says Russia Interested in NATO Proposals on Anti-Missile Defense - RIA Novosti [link]

• Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow is interested in cooperation with NATO on issues of anti-missile defense in Europe.
• NATO foreign ministers agreed at their informal meeting in Estonia last week to begin dialogue with Russia on cooperation in the sphere of anti-missile defense.
• Medvedev said in an interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) that Moscow has long "said that the system of global missile defense must protect not only a definite country or a group of countries, but function in the interests of all responsible participants of the international society."
• NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed last week in Estonia the importance of cooperation on missile defense that would protect the European and Russian populations against "a real missile threat."
• Medvedev said Russia would agree to the proposal form the NATO chief.

Is Iran Running Out of Uranium? - TIME Magazine [link]

• Western governments may be scrambling to push through tougher international sanctions against Iran, but the Islamic Republic's nuclear program may be facing a more immediate hurdle: How to replenish its dwindling uranium stocks.
• Iran's need to find fresh supplies of raw uranium supplies is increasingly urgent, according to some reports.
• An anonymous Zimbabwe government source told Britain's Telegraph newspaper last Friday that his country's Minister of Presidential Affairs, Didymus Mutasa, had made a secret deal with Iran last month during a visit to Tehran, under which the Iranians would provide the sanctions-battered southern African country with critically needed oil supplies, in exchange for what he called "the exclusive uranium rights" in Zimbabwe.
• Neither Iran nor Zimbabwe has confirmed the uranium deal, which could violate U.N. sanctions.

Using Virtual Reality To Make Nuclear Reality Safer - NPR [link]

• At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico -- home of the first American atomic bomb -- scientists are using video-game technology to enhance training for the inspectors who monitor civilian nuclear activities around the world.
• The goal is to use virtual models of nuclear facilities to provide much more realistic training -- an effort to revolutionize global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
• "In virtual reality, we can let people learn about a facility by standing in places that would not be safe or possible to stand," says Philip Hypes, a coordinator of nuclear non-proliferation projects at Los Alamos.

A View from the Dark Side

Countering the Growing Airborne Threat - Henry Obering III and Rebeccah Heinrichs in the Washington Times [link]

• New START explicitly prohibits certain missile-defense options, such as placing interceptors on submarines. Even if the U.S. does not currently have plans to pursue various initiatives, it is unwise to limit the options of future administrations.
• The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which was designed to ease tensions during the Cold War, tied the hands of the U.S. for years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Americans would overwhelmingly back a plan to invest more heavily in missile defense because they understand its goal - to intercept enemy missiles before they reach an unsuspecting city.