MOSCOW (AP) - A nuclear arms deal on the agenda of next month's U.S.-Russian summit for the first time will include ways to verify the dismantling of the warheads themselves, arms control analysts said Tuesday.
Earlier arms control agreements contained controls to verify the dismantling of nuclear submarines, missiles and bombers, but not warheads, said Rose Gottemoeller, an arms control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
``Historically, the strategic arms reduction agreements hadn't touched on warheads because they were considered to be too sensitive and difficult to monitor,'' Gottemoeller, who served on the National Security Council staff under former President Clinton, told a news conference.
``In this new agreement there will apparently be some measures to monitor warheads cooperatively,'' Gottemoeller said. ``This is a very welcome innovation in the strategic arms control process and the first in many years.''
President Bush has promised to cut the U.S. arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, while President Vladimir Putin has said Russia could go even lower, to 1,500 warheads from the current 6,000 that each country is currently allowed under the 1991 START I treaty.
Bush initially favored an informal deal, but later acceded to Putin's push to formalize the cuts in a written, legally binding agreement.
``It's much better for the predictability of our nuclear relationship if we proceed together under a legally binding agreement,'' Gottemoeller said.
While U.S. and Russian officials say that nuclear arms will top the agenda of Bush's visit to Russia, talks have been difficult because of Moscow's objection to the Pentagon's decision to stockpile decommissioned nuclear weapons rather than destroy them.
Russia's opposition began to melt last month, when Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov abruptly announced on a trip to Washington that Russia wouldn't mind if the United States put some of the decommissioned weapons in storage.
Despite Ivanov's optimism that a deal could be reached by the summit, Russian negotiators still oppose the U.S. plan to store the decommissioned weapons, said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear analyst with Carnegie's Moscow office.
Pikayev predicted that Russia would end up accepting the U.S. reduction plan because ``a bad deal is better than a good fight,'' but would demand in return to be freed of constraints under previous arms control agreements.
START I banned Russia from modifying its existing land-based nuclear missiles, the cheapest way to maintain nuclear parity with the United States, and Moscow wants to dump the restrictions, Pikayev said.
Russia will also push for inspections to be less intrusive than those provided under START I, which allowed U.S. inspectors wide access to Russian military facilities.