Putin leaves Kazakhstan without deal to build nuclear plant
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
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Publish date: March 17, 2009
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Obama plans to nominate Gottemoeller, a former Energy Department official now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, to serve as assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance, Reuters reported.
That post is likely to play a strong role in shaping US arms control policy as Washington prepares for negotiations with Moscow on how to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which expires in December.
START is aimed at reducing long-range nuclear weapons and was first negotiated during the superpower rivalry of the Cold War.
Russia sees the treaty as the cornerstone of post-Cold War arms control and believes that letting it lapse without finding an adequate replacement could upset the strategic balance.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after their first substantive meeting this month that they were determined to conclude a new START treaty by the end of the year.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
Russia is formally withdrawing from a landmark environmental agreement that channeled billions in international funding to secure the Soviet nuclear legacy, leaving undone some of the most radioactively dangerous projects and burning one more bridge of potential cooperation with the West.
While Moscow pushes ahead with major oil, gas and mining projects in the Arctic—bringing more pollution to the fragile region—the spoils of these undertakings are sold to fuel Russia’s war economy, Bellona’s Ksenia Vakhrusheva told a side event at the COP 29, now underway in Baku, Azerbaijan.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.