Obama, Medvedev Meet in Singapore, Russian-US Cooperation on Iran and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

Editor's Note:

While the US-EU governments keep pressuring Russia and China to join their efforts against the Iranian nuclear programs, they have never mentioned the Israeli nuclear arsenal, which has prompted the nuclear arms race in the Middle East !

Russia, U.S. could use 'other means' over Iran nuclear deadlock

SINGAPORE, November 15, 2009 (RIA Novosti) -

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that Russia and the United States could use 'other means' if the talks on Iran's nuclear program yielded no results.

"The aim of the negotiation process with Iran is to secure clear-cut guarantees from Tehran on the transparency of its nuclear program that does not cause concern of the international community," Medvedev said after his talks with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Forum in Singapore.

Medvedev said that if that plan failed, "other options remain on the table, in order to move the process in a different direction." He did not specify, however, what these options might be.

Tehran has rejected Western suspicions that it secretly plans to build nuclear weapons and insists on its right to nuclear technology for electricity generation.

Russia has consistently supported Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy, and has almost completed the country's first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Russian, U.S. presidents vow to renew strategic arms reduction treaty by year end

SINGAPORE, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) --

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama met Sunday on the sidelines of the APEC meetings and declared to update a strategic arms reduction pact.

According to local media, both leaders said negotiations over the replacement treaty of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty(START) were making progress, as the 1991 pact was due to run out early next month.

However, they said that there were still technical issues to be sorted out, according to a local source.

Since the 1980s, the United States and Russia (and its predecessor, the Soviet Union) have held rounds of talks and negotiations on strategic disarmament and have signed several treaties.

In July 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, or START I, which barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a total of 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers. The treaty took effect in December 1994, and was valid for a period of 15 years.

Both leaders also exchanged views on the Iran nuclear program and climate change.

Editor: Anne Tang

Medvedev approves of Obama’s focus on global security

MOSCOW, November 13, 2009 (Itar-Tass) --

President Dmitry Medvedev lauds the intention of the new American administration to ensure global security rather than to enhance the U.S. leadership.

“Obviously, the world should apply political and diplomatic, rather than military methods in the solution of conflicts,” he said in an article entitled “The Russian Role in the Transitional Period.”

The article was published in the annual supplement to the Economist magazine.

“The role of regional cooperation will grow,” the president said.

“The policy of leading nations will be increasingly targeted at the provision of global security, rather than at the leadership of a particular state. We welcome the intention of the incumbent American administration to take this path,” Medvedev said.

He also called for a more active dialog with other states.

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