United States Mission Geneva

Yesterday, the President transmitted the New START Treaty to the United States Senate. All of the documents associated with the transmittal package, including the texts of the Treaty, Protocol, and Annexes; the unilateral statements associated with the Treaty; the Secretary’s Report, including a detailed Article-by-Article analysis of the Treaty; and the President’s Message to the Senate are available on the State Department website.

Thirteen months ago in Prague, President Obama highlighted the nuclear dangers of the twenty-first century and laid out a pragmatic agenda to confront those dangers. He reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, and pledged to take concrete steps to achieve that goal. The United States is unequivocally committed to this goal.

This Review Conference provides an opportunity for all of us to rededicate ourselves to the central purpose of this treaty: to prevent the devastating effects of nuclear war.

Much has changed since the first START Treaty was signed by Presidents Bush and Gorbachev in 1991. Today’s leading threats – nuclear proliferation and terrorism – do not require the United States and Russia to deploy large nuclear arsenals.

As everyone in this room knows, April has been a big month for President Obama’s nuclear nonproliferation agenda. Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the new START Treaty in Prague. President Obama hosted the Nuclear Security Summit. The administration released its unclassified Nuclear Posture Review. And a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference begins in about ten days.

Remarks by Ambassador Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, on Disarmament and World Security, in the General Assembly

U.S. and Russian New START Delegations held their closing plenary on April 9, 2010 in Geneva, Switzerland, where many of the negotiations on the new arms control treaty took place over the course of the past 11 months.

President Obama: “This day demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia — the two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons — to pursue responsible global leadership. Together, we are keeping our commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which must be the foundation for global non-proliferation.”

Today the United States and Russia will sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague, reducing the number of strategic nuclear warheads in our arsenals to levels not seen since the first decade of the nuclear age. This verifiable reduction by the world’s two largest nuclear powers reflects our commitment to the basic bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — all nations have the right to seek the peaceful use of nuclear energy, but they all also have the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation, and those that do possess these weapons must work toward disarmament.