OREANDA-NEWS. April 08, 2010. Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms was signed in Prague.

A Protocol to the Treaty on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms was also signed.

The Russian Federation has made a statement on missile defence.

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Ladies and gentlemen,

I fully agree with what my colleague President Obama has just said, that in this hall a few minutes ago a historic event really did occur: the signing of a new Russia-US Treaty on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. This ten-year agreement will govern what happens in the near future. It replaces the Treaty on strategic offensive arms that has now expired [START 1] and the other Treaty, the Russia-US Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty [SORT].

First and foremost I would like to thank my colleague, the President of the United States, for his ongoing cooperation in this very complex matter and for the reasonable compromises that have been achieved thanks to the work of our two teams [of negotiators]. We have already thanked them today, but I would like to thank them once again in the presence of the media and the public for their excellent work.

I would also particularly like to thank the leadership of the Czech Republic and President Klaus for the invitation to hold the signing ceremony here in Prague, in this beautiful city with its wonderful spring weather that encourages us to be optimistic about the future. I think this signing will start a new page in cooperation between our countries and create a safer environment for life on our planet.

When we were working on these issues, we focused primarily on the quality of the treaty. And the negotiating process was not simple, but again our negotiation teams have been working in a highly professional and constructive way, working non-stop, virtually round the clock. And this enabled us to do something that only a few months ago seemed highly unlikely, perhaps even to members of the respective delegations, namely meet tight deadlines set for the preparation of a comprehensive agreement and be ready to sign it. As a result, we have come up with a document that fully strikes a balance between Russian and American interests. The main thing is that there are no winners and losers. Rather, this is what they call a win-win situation [in English]. I think that accurately describes what we have accomplished. Both sides have won by improving their security, and this victory is also a victory for the global community. The new agreement reinforces global strategic stability and simultaneously facilitates the transition to a new, higher level in our relations, in relations with the United States of America.

Although the content of the Treaty has been widely publicised, I want to point out once again what we have achieved, because these are very important things. The Treaty allows for 1,550 weapons to be deployed by each side, which is about one-third below the current level. It provides for a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers. This is less than half the previous level. Finally there is a limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers for such missiles, as well as deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers – again, less than half the level that existed before the signing of the Treaty. At the same time, each party shall independently determine the composition and the structure of its strategic offensive arms. These are the essentials of the agreement.

The Treaty also establishes data exchange provisions. This is an issue my colleagues and I know inside out. We talked so much about telemetry that now we are real experts in this field, perhaps the best in the world. The Treaty also lays out measures relating to conversion and the elimination of inspection and verification procedures, and of course confidence-building measures. The verification mechanism is now simpler and less expensive as compared to the previous treaty, but at the same time it provides for proper verification, irreversibility and verifiability, and of course transparency of the process of reducing strategic offensive arms.

We believe – and our American partners are well aware of this; we said it quite openly – that the Treaty can be effective and viable only if the US refrains from increasing its missile defence capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively in such a way that threatens the potential of Russia's strategic nuclear forces. This is the essence of the Russian Federation's Statement [on Missile Defence] made in connection with the signing of the Treaty and which will of course be published.

We regard our main task after the signing of the Treaty to be its ratification, as the President of the United States has just said. It's not just signing the Treaty that’s important but also synchronising the process of its ratification. As I understand it, our American partners intend to submit this document to the Senate for consideration as soon as possible. We will also work with our Federal Assembly [Russian parliament] to maintain the necessary dynamics of the ratification process. In general, we are satisfied with the work we have done – this is a good result.

But of course today we discussed more than the fact of signing the Treaty, because the documents had already been prepared. We discussed a whole range of important key issues, issues of concern to all the countries. Naturally we could not ignore Iran's nuclear programme. Unfortunately, Iran is not responding to a number of constructive proposals that have been made in this regard, and we cannot turn a blind eye to this. So I do not exclude the possibility that the [UN] Security Council will have to reconsider this matter.

Our position is well-known but I am happy to go over it again briefly here. Of course sanctions by themselves rarely lead to any concrete results, although sometimes they cannot be avoided. In any case, those sanctions should be “smart”, designed to help achieve specific non-proliferation objectives, rather than harm the Iranian people and create a humanitarian catastrophe. We will pay close attention to what our partners are doing, but in any case our actions will be determined by the political and diplomatic precepts outlined by the Group of Six [international mediators Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States]. Naturally the discussion of these issues will continue.

I see the progress towards reaching a new quality level in our relations with the United States (as President Obama just said), relations that take into account our mutual interests and that are based on predictability, as a weighty result of our today’s meeting. In this regard the Treaty we just signed will help bring us together. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention again the importance of our personal relations, what is generally called personal chemistry, since I think that they have been key in helping us to reach an agreement. 

But for good relations we need more than just effective communication between the presidents. This is certainly important, but the presidents themselves can’t resolve the issues dealt with by the executive structures. So we need to establish working contacts at all levels of executive power. The Russian-American Presidential Commission has done good work, and its coordinators, the US Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton] and Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs [Sergei Lavrov], recently informed us of what they have accomplished. Almost all of the 16 working groups that we created have held meetings and identified priorities for the coming years. We are very happy about this.

Our agenda is full of specific projects. Today we had a good discussion about the economy, which in my opinion is the most neglected sphere of Russian-American relations. We have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue concerning strategic stability and security; now we need to move forward on economic issues. I am very glad that in this discussion we talked about the development of high-tech projects, the creation of the so-called new, high-tech, knowledge-based economy, which is possible only thanks to cross-border cooperation. In this respect we have also established very good contacts. Now the main thing is to turn these discussions into concrete agreements. I would like that to happen during my visit to the United States of America that my colleague and I have scheduled for this summer.

I am convinced that all that has been done so far is only the beginning of a long journey. I would be very disappointed if relations between the Russian Federation and the United States were confined to the limitation of strategic offensive arms, although we do have a special responsibility that we are ready to assume. We will continue down this path. But we must also move forward in other areas, for the sake of our peoples and for the situation in the world at large. As I see it, today we have made a very important step in this direction, a step toward building trust and understanding between our two countries.

Once again, I would like to thank President Barack Obama for his excellent cooperation in this area.

Thank you.