By DPA,
Prague : US President Barack Obama arrived in Prague Thursday to sign a new nuclear arms control treaty with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
The two leaders are set to ink a pact under which their countries would be obliged to reduce their nuclear arsenals. The deal is to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) if ratified by the US Senate and Russian Duma.
About a year ago in the Czech capital, Obama outlined his ambitious vision to rid the world of nuclear arms. The treaty is seen as the first tangible feat of his disarmament policy.
The US and Russia own around 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arms and their leaders have said the treaty would set an example for other countries, which have nuclear weapons or intend to obtain them.
After his arrival in Prague Thursday, Medvedev called the deal a key document that will shape global disarmament efforts.
Under the new agreement, the two powers would cut their strategic war heads to 1,550 each, or about one-third below current levels. The launchers, including submarines and heavy bombers, would be cut by a half to a total of 800 per country.
But critics have said that the commitments outlined in the deal, whose full text is yet to be released, are too modest and do not go far enough to motivate other countries to disarm.
Obama’s vision and the pact’s clout will be soon put to the first test.
The signing comes ahead of a high-level nuclear safety summit in Washington April 12-13 and a five-yearly United Nations conference in May to evaluate adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Obama has presented the treaty’s completion, after more than a year of tough Geneva-based talks, as a display of a new start in US-Russian relations, which became tense under the administration of his predecessor George W Bush.
In addition, he is set to meet leaders of 11 former Eastern Bloc countries over dinner in Prague in a bid to remove worries in the ex-Soviet region from his warming up to Russia.