"Treaty of Confidence: New START may be signed 18-19 December in a European

Capital. Russia and United States Reached Compromise: Monitoring Measures Will
Be Weakened in the New Treaty"

Moscow

Vedomosti

11 Dec 09

by Aleksey Nikolskiy, Vera Kholmogorova, Natalya Kostenko, and Natalya

Portyakova

The US administration announced on 4 December that President Barack Obama will

visit Copenhagen, where the climate conference is under way, on 18 December, but
not in the current week as planned. Yesterday the Kremlin Press Service announced
that President Dmitriy Medvedev will visit Copenhagen 17-18 December. The
purpose of the trip is to take part in the conference, a Kremlin spokesman says. He
has no information as to whether or not there will be a meeting with Obama.
According to a source close to the RF MID [Foreign Ministry], the signing of the
Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms (SNV) can occur during this trip
to Europe by Medvedev, tentatively during 18-19 December and not in
Copenhagen, but in another European capital.

It was ascertained by a Russian expert familiar with the progress of talks

and by one of the State Duma leaders that the main disagreements on
monitoring measures in the new treaty have been overcome on the whole.
According to them, the key issue of the disputes concerned openness of
telemetry. The United States has not held tests since the 2000's, but continues to
keep an eye on the launches of Russian Topol-M, Bulava, and other missiles, taking
advantage of the fact that the missile transmits data on the flight openly and not in
encoded form in accordance with START I requirements. Eventually the parties
arrived at a compromise: telemetry will be open in a limited number of cases.

According to Vedomosti sources, discussion continues regarding missile defense:

Russia favors a total ban on reorganizing missile defense systems as strategic
systems capable of nullifying a rival's nuclear potential, and even spelling this out in
the treaty preamble. The treaty possibly will contain a provision authorizing
withdrawal from it in case PRO [BMD] systems are developed to a level
threatening Russia's nuclear potential; in addition, Russia insists that the
treaty not interfere with development of ground-launched multiple-
warhead missiles by which this potential could be built up rapidly in case of
threat.
A third issue is close to resolution. Russia does not like unilateral US monitoring of
mobile Topol missiles. Most likely [the United States] will give up this
monitoring [at Votkinsk] altogether, and in exchange Russia will not
demand the monitoring of submarines, which are the foundation of US
potential.

According to Yevgeniy Myasnikov, an expert of the Center for Study of Problems of

Disarmament, inasmuch as the United States did not have mobile complexes similar
to Topol, the START I monitoring measures were asymmetric, and the same thing
happened with telemetry as well.

Concerning readiness of the treaty, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov

commented to Vedomosti that the principle of "nothing has been agreed until
everything has been agreed" acts in such matters. But a source in the Foreign
Ministry close to the negotiating process confirmed indirectly that the new treaty
devotes less space to rigorous monitoring in favor of relations of
confidence: "From the very beginning of work on the new treaty both sides set the
task of making the future regime of monitoring and verification less costly and more
responsive to the current stage of bilateral relations, characterized by considerably
deepened trust: under such conditions, retention of the previous regime would not
be justified either from a political or a military standpoint."