Breaking News Alert: Breakthrough Is Reported in U.S. Arms Pact With Russia

[BurtWorm]

The New York Times
Wed, March 24, 2010 -- 12:44 PM ET
-----


President Obama and his Russian counterpart, President Dmitri
A. Medvedev, have broken through a logjam in their arms
control negotiations and expect to sign a new treaty slashing
American and Russian nuclear arsenals in Prague next month,
officials from both nations said Wednesday.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25start.html?hp



(Teabaggies see evidence of commie conspiracy.)

[BurtWorm]

1. The breakthrough ended nearly a year of difficult and tumultuous negotiations

(Times story by Peter Baker continued):

...

The breakthrough ended nearly a year of difficult and tumultuous negotiations that went on far longer than the two sides initially expected. Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev first agreed to negotiate a treaty during a meeting in London last April, and then set parameters for the agreement during a meeting in Moscow in July. But the December deadline for finishing it came and went without a deal.

The two sides quarreled over issues like verifying compliance, sharing telemetry and limiting missile defense programs. Mr. Obama scrapped former President George W. Bush’s original plans for an antimissile shield in Europe and offered a new plan, but Moscow objected to the new version as well and wanted the treaty to restrict the American program. Mr. Obama refused, and the Russians eventually had to settle for nonbinding language recognizing the relationship between offensive and defensive weapons.

The treaty would require each side to reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads to roughly 1,600, down from 2,200 now, officials have said. It would also oblige each side to reduce its arsenal of strategic bombers and land- and sea-based missiles to 800, half the old limit of 1,600.

Arms control advocates consider those reductions to be relatively modest. But Mr. Obama wanted to negotiate a relatively straightforward replacement for the Start treaty as a way to rebuild trust with Moscow, leading to more ambitious agreements down the road.

Once this first treaty is done, the administration wants to open talks on further reductions in deployed strategic nuclear warheads, perhaps down to 1,000 each, as well as elimination of at least some of the thousands of strategic warheads currently in storage, and the thousands more tactical nuclear bombs that each side has.

...

[Botany]

2. Damn that socialist muslim commie nazi kenyan

saving money and lowering the chance of a thermonuclear war .... is there no stopping him?

[quiet.american]

3. GObama. nt

[WCGreen]

4. And so Foreign Policy was Bush's main focus...

Obama gets it done...

You watch, a whole bunch of stuff is going to break our way. People are going to see that the Democrats can get stuff done.

But watch Beck et al start painting President Obama as Chamberlain...

[BurtWorm]

7. In the apst week Obama has taken some big steps out of the footprints of Jimmy Carter.

This is a good sign. I'd like him to take more risks toward bold moves.

[MerryBlooms]

5. He must have apologized again.

Insert huge <sarcasm>.

[arcadian]

6. Can't wait for the rights spin on this.

That commie in the oval office can't stand up to the rooskies. They'll have to dust off their old tired Cold War dictionaries.

[lamp_shade]

8. Wonderful!