Moscow, April 14: Days after Russia and the US signed a landmark pact on slashing nuclear warheads, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called on US lawmakers to “now ratify” the treaty.
“If there is no ratification that means we have returned to the Soviet times when such treaties were not ratified,” the Russian president said on Tuesday.
The new START treaty, which was signed by Moscow and Washington in Prague last week, requires both nuclear powers to reduce their nuclear arsenals by about one-third.
The new pact, which comes as a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expired in December 2009, will have to be ratified by the US Senate and the Russian Duma.
Addressing the issue of US-Russian relations, President Medvedev hailed a change of atmosphere in ties, saying, “Russia needs a responsible, peaceful, authoritative, and dynamically developing America.”
Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, he said “We will work with the United States on the most important global problems,” signaling that Moscow wants to improve relations with Washington.
———Agencies