Duma panel to ratify START II treaty

MOSCOW, APRIL 10: The International Relations Committee of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, decided today to ratify the STAR...

MOSCOW, APRIL 10: The International Relations Committee of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, decided today to ratify the START II arms treaty, which has been hanging fire for about seven years.

Committee chairman Dmitry Rogozin said the parliamentary committee took the decision at a closed-door meeting, in which Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and the commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces Vladimir Yakovlev also participated.

The Duma has in the past repeatedly postponed considering ratification of the treaty citing the US-led invasion of Iraq and NATO-led military strike against Yugoslavia. The US Senate ratified the treaty in 1995.

Story continues below this ad

Following suspension of Russia’s parliamentary delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last week for alleged human rights abuses in Chechnya, the angry deputies have demanded that the treaty not be ratified as a retaliatory measure.

Last week, President-elect Vladimir Putin, during his visit to the north city of Murmansk to watch naval war games, had urged the Duma deputies to ratify the treaty so that they could move forward to take up START III.

Russian media said the Duma may consider the treaty in late April or early May.

On Monday, Putin chaired a meting of Russia’s Security Council in the Kremlin to consider strategic issues, connected with the arms treaties and changes proposed by the US in the ABM treaty, state-run television station RTR reported.

Story continues below this ad

US wants to amend the 1972 treaty in order to develop a national missile defence system, which Russia has vehemently opposed.

Ivanov warned the US today that their drive to change the ABM treaty might provoke “Cold War-style tensions”, pushing the world into a new confrontation.

“The collapse of the 1972 ABM treaty would cast the world into a new confrontation,” Ivanov said during his talks with a visiting US business delegation.

“The climate in which our economic cooperation develops depends to a large extent on the long term resolution of issues related to strategic stability,” he noted.