www.newsmax.com reports: Kissinger, Shultz Behind U.S.-Russian Arms Talks
A meeting in London between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ended with the announcement that the U.S. and Russia will seek to further reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
But Newsmax has learned that progress toward arms reduction was set in motion by a little-publicized meeting last month involving Russian strong man Valdmir Putin and the two American elder statesmen, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.
Kissinger, who served as Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Schultz, President Reagan's Secretary of State, traveled to Moscow along with former Sen. Sam Nunn and former Defense Secretary William Perry.
They were acting as private citizens and not on an official visit, but Obama was using the statesmen to sound out the Russians on arm reduction.
A source revealed that Obama and Schulz spoke by telephone before the Russian meeting, and that Obama voiced his strong support for their nuclear initiative. Obama reportedly said the matter was a priority for his new administration, though economic issues were taking center stage for the moment.
Kissinger told the Los Angeles Times that after meeting with Putin he had found ample grounds for cooperation.
"I'm happy to report that the differences were not so remarkable and the agreements were considerable," he said.
Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry made their views on arms reduction clear in an article that was published in The Wall Street Journal in January.
The four statesmen advocate "reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world."
They argue that the end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual deterrence obsolete, but warn that the world is now "on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era" in which North Korea and Iran could become nuclear powers and terrorists might obtain nuclear weapons.
To deal with the threat, what is needed is "intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise," the Kissinger team wrote in the Journal.
"Such a joint enterprise, by involving changes in the disposition of the states possessing nuclear weapons, would lend additional weight to efforts already under way to avoid the emergence of a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran."
Among the steps the statesmen suggest are "continuing to reduce substantially the size of nuclear forces in all states that possess them."
That is precisely what Obama and Medvedev discussed in London. In a statement released after their meeting, the two leaders announced talks aimed at replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire in December.
Obama accepted Medvedev's invitation to visit Moscow in July to assess negotiators' progress on arms reduction, which would give the U.S. Senate enough time to debate and approve a new treaty before the December expiration date.