New START to be ratified by US Senate despite protests-Lugar

Asked about the START destiny in the upper house of the Congress Lugar noted that he thinks that the treaty's prospects are good.

However, Lugar did not deny that he feels some concern over the possible deeper dragging of the treaty into the US internal political squabbles in the run-up to the primary elections to the Congress that will be held in November. There are those in the republican minority in the Senate who simply distrust Russians and the others regarding the victory every day before the elections on which nothing happened, the senator admitted.

He also confirmed that he totally disagrees with Massachusetts ex-governor Mitt Romney, member of the Republican Party who has recently published in The Washington Post an article devoted to the treaty entitled "Obama's Worst Foreign Policy Mistake." Romney wrote in the article, in particular, that the "New-START gives Russia a massive nuclear weapon advantage over the United States. The treaty ignores tactical nuclear weapons, where Russia outnumbers us by as much as 10 to 1. Obama heralds a reduction in strategic weapons from approximately 2,200 to 1,550 but fails to mention that Russia will retain more than 10,000 nuclear warheads that are categorized as tactical because they are mounted on missiles that cannot reach the United States. But surely they can reach our allies, nations that depend on us for a nuclear umbrella. And who can know how those tactical nuclear warheads might be reconfigured? Astonishingly, while excusing tactical nukes from the treaty, the Obama administration bows to Russia's insistence that conventional weapons mounted on ICBMs are counted under the treaty's warhead and launcher limits."

If ratified, the treaty will limit the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, which is down nearly two-thirds from the original START treaty and is 30% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty and it will limit to 800 the number of deployed and non-deployed inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments. Also it will limit the number of deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 700; Kazinform cites Itar-Tass. See www.itar-tass.com for full version.