New York: President Barack Obama is
rethinking the US nuclear policy and is considering reducing
the nation's arsenal by thousands of weapons, according to
senior aides in the White House.
The New York Times reported that Obama would set out
his new policy in a document the Nuclear Posture Review.
The new strategy entails that the US develop no
further nuclear weapons. Aides told the daily that Obama would
be resolving these questions in the coming week.
"It will be clear in the document that there will be
very dramatic reductions - in the thousands - as relates to
the stockpile," according to one senior administration
official.
Skeptics aren't too thrilled with a change in nuclear
policy at a time when there is a danger of North Korea and
Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
Under the new policy, Obama will have to review how
to reduce the situations in which the US can use nuclear
weapons, and to assess its position about using nukes against
chemical and biological weapons, the Times noted.
Obama, however, has already announced strengthening a
much smaller arsenal, and the new strategy will also look at
securing non-nuclear defences such as missiles.
"But under Obama's strategy, the missiles would be
based at new sites around the US that might even be open to
inspection, so that Russia and China would know that a missile
launched from those sites was not nuclear, to avoid having
them place their own nuclear forces on high alert," the Times
writes.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, March 02, 2010, 00:03