US official say new treaty would cut nuclear weapons by 25 percent

US official: Treaty cuts nuclear weapons by fourth

WASHINGTON — A U.S. official says a treaty expected to be sealed with Russia within hours would cut by 25 percent the number of deployed nuclear weapons.

The official says the agreement would limit each side to 700 armed launchers — such as missiles, bombers or submarines — that are ready to be fired.

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to finalize the agreement in a phone conversation Friday morning.

The agreement would also limit both sides to 1,550 nuclear warheads — a further reduction from previously planned cuts.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak ahead of the announcement.

The official said the U.S. prevailed in keeping missile defense limitations out of the treaty.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

MOSCOW (AP) — President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are within hours of an agreement on the final details of a historic new treaty that would drastically slash the nations’ nuclear arsenals, U.S. and Russian officials said Friday.

The two leaders were planning to sign off on the language of the treaty and its annexes during a phone conversation, senior officials on both sides said. Later, both presidents are expected to announce a place and time for the formal signing, a Russian official said.

All spoke on condition of anonymity, because the call had not yet taken place.

The deal has been worked out in principle, but the language implementing it has not yet been agreed on, the Russian official said.

U.S. officials have said previously that the treaty is expected to be signed in Prague on April 8, just a few days before the international nuclear security summit in Washington.

The accord, the first major arms control agreement in a generation between the two former Cold War adversaries, raises hopes for further disarmament initiatives. The pact is expected to cut the number of long-range nuclear weapons held by each side to about 1,500 and sharply slash the number of missiles and other delivery vehicles.

Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, said Friday the treaty advances the causes of nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament, while standing as a symbol that U.S. President Barack Obama’s effort to mend tattered U.S. relations with Russia is working.

“I think this also means that the environment of U.S.-Russia relations has improved, and I think we will feel the positive impact of that treaty for some time,” Trenin told the AP.

But he warned that both sides should move quickly to follow up the treaty with agreements on other thorny issues. Otherwise, he said, the new era of good feeling between Washington and Moscow “may be a short-lived effect.”

The signing ceremony will set the stage for a White House campaign to win Senate ratification. The treaty also must win approval by Russian parliament, and the two legislative processes are likely to take months.

Robert S. Norris, a longtime analyst of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, predicted that the White House could find it difficult to win Senate approval.

“Hard negotiations with the Russians will now be followed by hard negotiations with Republican senators to achieve ratification,” Norris said.

The signing in Prague comes about a year after Obama declared his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech there.

The new agreement to reduce long-range nuclear weapons would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December.

Both sides said that the new treaty, like the 1991 agreement, should set up a mechanism for verifying compliance with its terms. A 2002 deal, known as the Moscow Treaty, called for accelerated weapons reductions but did not include any mechanism for verifying them.

The Moscow Treaty set limits on both sides’ strategic nuclear warheads at between 1,700 and 2,200. The new deal, whose provisions have not been made public, is expected to lower that to about 1,500. It also would reduce the permissible number of strategic launchers — the missiles and bombers that deliver warheads to their targets.

Obama spent an hour Wednesday in the White House briefing Democratic Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Lugar, the committee’s ranking Republican. Both would play major roles in ratification of the emerging treaty.

Negotiations, which have been under way in Geneva since last spring, became bogged down in recent months on disputes over verification measures and Russia’s objection to U.S. missile defense plans for Europe.

Russian negotiators have balked at including some intrusive weapons verification measures in the new treaty. The Obama administration has warned that without these, Senate ratification could prove difficult.

The agreement would still leave each country with a large number of nuclear weapons, both deployed and stockpiled.

Norris, the nuclear weapons expert, and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists estimate that the U.S. has 2,150 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and the Russians have about 2,600. The U.S. has another 2,600 warheads held in reserve, plus 500 non-strategic nuclear weapons, by the two experts’ estimate. Another 4,200 retired U.S. strategic warheads are awaiting dismantlement.

Trenin said both the U.S. and Russia could use the new START treaty as a springboard to settling other thorny issues.

The U.S., he noted, is looking to Russia to back tough sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow meanwhile, wants a revival of its agreement with the U.S. on civilian nuclear power, which would help Russia establish an international nuclear fuel storage facility.

The Bush administration submitted that deal to Congress, but the White House dropped its support following the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

Trenin said the new treaty would also help both sides sell global disarmament initiatives in May, at a conference on the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York City.

In particular, it would help Obama, who has called for working toward a total ban on nuclear weapons.

“The eyes of the world are on the U.S., in particular President Obama, because he’s already committed himself to nuclear disarmament,” Trenin said. “He will be on firmer ground now that the treaty is virtually in hand.”

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Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Mark S. Smith, Desmond Butler, Anne Flaherty, Matthew Lee and Jennifer Loven in Washington, Lynn Berry in Moscow and Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.