WASHINGTON – The United States and Russia reached a last-minute agreement saving a program to secure or destroy Soviet nuclear warheads, chemical weapons and killer germs, U.S. officials said yesterday, breaking a two-year logjam and averting a rupture weeks before President Bush travels to St. Petersburg.
The program, a multibillion-dollar effort designed to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists or rogue states, was due to expire Friday amid a stubborn disagreement over legal provisions. But U.S. and Russian officials cut a deal in Moscow that same day to extend the program for seven years.
The Cooperative Threat Reduction program with Russia represents the most expansive disarmament effort in the world, and the prospect that it could be halted deeply worried arms control specialists.
The program, which began 14 years ago after the Cold War ended, has deactivated thousands of warheads, missiles and bombers and made some progress toward securing biological and chemical weapons.
But the work has gone slower than hoped, and Russia still maintains thousands of additional aging nuclear warheads as well as vast stockpiles of other weapons that specialists fear are vulnerable to theft or sale on the international black market.
