The Associated Press & The Washington Post,
4 February 2010

Sweden, Poland urge sharp cuts in tactical nukes

STOCKHOLM -- The foreign ministers of Sweden and Poland on Monday urged the U.S. and Russia to sharply reduce their arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons, and said Moscow should withdraw such arms from areas bordering the European Union.

In an op-ed published on the Web site of the International Herald Tribune, Sweden`s Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski of Poland singled out Russian warheads placed in the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea and the Kola Peninsula of northwestern Russia.

"Such a withdrawal could be accompanied by the destruction of relevant storage facilities," the two ministers said.

U.S. and Russian negotiators have been seeking a new nuclear arms reduction deal to replace a 1991 treaty on strategic nuclear weapons. Bildt and Sikorski said the time has come for an arms control regime to also cover tactical weapons, which are designed to be used on the battlefield rather than placed on intercontinental ballistic missiles.

"Such weapons are dangerous remnants of a dangerous past - and they should not be allowed to endanger our common future," they said.

The U.S. is believed to store about 200 warheads in Western Europe, and that Russia holds about 2,000 warheads, mostly in Western Russia, the ministers said. They urged the former Cold War foes to "greatly reduce" those weapons, by negotiations or unilateral moves, as steps toward their total elimination.

"With some exceptions, tactical nuclear weapons were designed for outdated, large-scale war on the European continent," they said.

On Tuesday, Bildt will address a conference in Paris of Global Zero, a nongovernment nuclear disarmament group that includes more than 200 political leaders and military officials from around the world.

Your opinion (comments to the article)?

Это оружие действительно угрожает России. Книга Откровения предрекает, что во время Третьей мировой войны будет использован "большой меч" - ядерное оружие (Откровение 6:4).

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