Obama, Medvedev Agree on Talk Structure

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Obama, Medvedev Sign Nuclear Understanding

President Obama will spend three days in Russia hoping to work with President Dmitry Medvedev to create an outline a nuclear arms control treaty.

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Meanwhile, U.S. officials have balked at Moscow's insistence on steep cuts in the numbers of long-range missile launchers and heavy bombers that each side can keep.

START set a limit of 1,600 such "delivery systems" for each country, and U.S. negotiators offered to reduce that to the range of 1,000 to 1,100. But Russia wanted to set the ceiling closer to 600, Rogov said.

The demand reflected Russian anxiety about the Pentagon's ability to quickly rebuild the U.S. nuclear arsenal by taking warheads out of storage and putting them on missiles and bombers again.

The Russian military is also worried about U.S. plans to refit missiles and bombers with conventional payloads, which it fears could extend American military superiority and could be used to overwhelm Russia's nuclear forces.

In data disclosed under START in January, the United States said it had about 1,200 delivery systems and Russia reported about 800.

The Obama administration can bring the U.S. count down by dismantling about 100 missile silos no longer in use. But achieving sharper cuts would mean taking down active missile silos, implementing costly modifications to submarines and destroying bombers assigned to nonnuclear missions.

Pavel Podvig, an arms-control scholar at Stanford University, said none of these options is politically feasible because the administration has not completed a Congress-mandated review of U.S. nuclear strategy. If Obama agreed to any of them, Republican lawmakers, who generally oppose limits on delivery systems, "would eat him alive," Podvig said.

On missile defense, Obama has said he is still reviewing the plan inherited from President George W. Bush to deploy interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. But a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, highlighted the analysis of a Stanford physicist, Dean Wilkening, who recently challenged the Bush plan.

In an interview, Wilkening said he presented the White House with data showing two alternatives that would better protect Europe from an Iranian missile attack: one with a radar in Turkey and interceptors in Romania and the other using a version of the Navy's Aegis theater missile defense system expected to be available in 2015. Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, former commander of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, said Moscow would not accept deployment of long-range interceptors in Romania but would welcome a system built around the Aegis system, which the Russian military does not consider a strategic threat.

Even as it explores alternatives, though, the Obama administration has refused Russian demands to openly renounce the Polish-Czech plan. Analysts said that the administration does not want to be seen as giving in to Russian pressure or abandoning allies in Europe, and that it believes a provision limiting missile defense would make it harder to win Senate ratification of a new treaty.

Medvedev, who took office last year, is also under pressure not to back down, a situation complicated by his partnership with his powerful patron and predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev agreed to remove missile defense from the scope of treaty talks when he met with Obama in April, the senior administration official said. But in recent weeks, top Russian military officials have made a series of public statements demanding that the Polish-Czech plan be scrapped in any accord.

"This is a very visible and politically useful issue, and a lot of people are getting a lot of mileage out of the controversy," Podvig said. "There are people in Moscow who are not really interested in having an agreement."

In remarks broadcast on state television Sunday, Medvedev said he considered missile defense "interconnected" with the arms-control treaty. But he hinted at some flexibility, saying it would be "sufficient" for Obama to "show restraint and show an ability to compromise."

Meanwhile, in an interview with the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper to be published Monday, Obama repeated assurances that U.S. missile defenses were not aimed at Russia, saying, "Such thinking is simply a legacy of the Cold War."

"We have not yet decided how we will configure missile defense in Europe," he added, "but my sincere hope is that Russia will be a partner in that project."

Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, former chief of the Russian military's main research institute for nuclear strategy, said a compromise is possible if the presidents are determined to make the summit a success. Rules for counting launchers could be adjusted, he said, and Washington could commit to a five-year moratorium on deployment of missile defenses while it studies its options.

Other analysts suggested a provision delaying deployment until the danger from Iran is confirmed, along with a commitment to conduct a joint threat assessment and to work together on missile defense.

Cooperation on missile defense is considered a pet cause of Putin's, and the Obama administration has expressed interest in offers to use Russian radars in the Krasnodar region and in Azerbaijan for early detection of missile launches in Iran.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said a pact to work together on missile defense would be a major breakthrough because it could undermine "the central premise of Russian strategic thinking -- that the United States has a hidden agenda to destroy Russia."

But he added: "I'm not very optimistic this will happen at this meeting."

Staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.