Russia seeks nuclear parity with US

MOSCOW—First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, tipped by some analysts as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday Russia must achieve nuclear arms parity with the United States.
“Military potential, to say nothing of nuclear potential, must be at the proper level if we want ... to just stay independent,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted Ivanov as saying. “The weak are not loved and not heard, they are insulted, and when we have parity they will talk to us in a different way.” Ivanov was speaking to veterans and members of Russia’s military-industrial commission, which he heads and which is marking its 50th anniversary.
Kremlin-watchers have picked the loyal Putin lieutenant as a possible candidate to succeed the Russian leader, who is due to step down after a presidential election in March.
Putin himself has also made strongly worded statements about Russia’s need to reassert its role as a superpower and boost its defenses. Ivanov, who had earlier stressed Moscow was seeking “a qualitative rather than a numerical parity,” said every year Russia would now be commissioning six or seven of its latest “Topol-M” nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, although it was capable of producing 25 or 30 annually.
The missiles — the first developed by Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 — can carry up to six warheads and are mounted on mobile launchers.
Putin congratulated the Cold War-era commission on its anniversary, saying “it has significantly contributed to the development of the economy, the military-industrial complex and the increase in the country’s security.” Vladislav Putilin, the commission’s deputy chief, said the task was “to revive and adapt this (Cold War-era) system to the realities of a market economy.”
Stressing the need for nuclear parity with the United States, Ivanov told commission members about a talk he had with former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “That same Donald Rumsfeld, who had spent his childhood in Chicago which is famous for its mobsters, told me, ‘They listen better to your arguments if you don’t just smile, but also hide a gun in your bosom’,” Ivanov said. Ivanov singled out for praise the former Soviet ministry in charge of the nuclear weapons program, which achieved nuclear parity with the United States by the late 1970s. Armed with support from NATO allies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will try to convince a skeptical Russia that it should back U.S. plans to step up pressure on Iran to suspend its nuclear activities.
Having won NATO endorsement to stay the course despite a new U.S. intelligence assessment that concludes Iran stopped its atomic weapons development program in 2003, Rice was to meet Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has become the public face of opposition to new U.N. sanctions.
On the sidelines of a NATO meeting already beset by alliance differences with Russia over U.S. plans for European missile defense and troop deployments in Europe, Rice and Lavrov were to discuss Washington’s surprising revision of its view of Iranian nuclear intentions. The National Intelligence Estimate, released Monday, credited intense diplomatic activity for Iran’s decision on weapons. “The point that I’m emphasizing to people is that it was international pressure that got the Iranians to halt their program,” Rice said. “This suggests that you ought to keep up that international pressure,” she told reporters on her way to Belgium for her first face-to-face talks on the matter with foreign officials since the intelligence report became public.
“We ... take the opportunity of our meeting today to again urge Iran to comply” with existing U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions that demand its compliance on the nuclear issue, alliance foreign ministers said.
“There was unanimity around the table that there is a clear choice for Iran,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters, noting offers of nuclear cooperation with Iran if it stops enriching and reprocessing uranium. “Iran can see the outstretched hand from the international community if they are willing to join the drive against proliferation,” he said. “But if Iran persists on defying the will of the United Nations Security Council, then there must be further sanctions.”—Agencies