March 17, 2014

U.S., RUSSIA STILL COOPERATING ON LEAD-UP TO NUCLEAR SECURITY SUMMIT

By ExchangeMonitor

Despite tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and reported threats from Moscow that it might bar arms control inspectors from the country over concerns about potential sanctions, the two countries are continuing to cooperate in the lead-up to the Nuclear Security Summit, a senior White House official said yesterday. Scheduled for the Netherlands March 24-25, the summit will be the third meeting of world leaders to deal with securing nuclear materials and safeguarding them from potential terrorists. “We continue to work toward this summit in The Hague with our Russian counterparts very effectively,” Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and Arms Control, said at a National Journal policy summit yesterday. “They’re important contributors to this process as a country that has a significant possession of both civilian and military nuclear material, and we expect this to be a very constructive summit in that domain as well.”

Sherwood-Randall said the U.S. was still expecting Russia to abide by its arms control agreements, which includes the New START Treaty as well as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. That agreement allowed Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons stockpile it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union in exchange for a promise of sovereignty from Russia. “We are calling on Russia to abide by that commitment and the world is quite united in its expression of strong disapproval of the Russian current occupation of Crimea,” Sherwood-Randall said. “We have continued to point out to the Russians that they are a party to this agreement and have an obligation to respect it.”

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