It would also require the resumption of on-site inspections that lapsed last December when the original Start treaty expired.
The vehicle must have at least four wheels — two of them steerable — and be back at the original start line within 60 minutes.
A new State Department report released Wednesday concluded that Russia lived up to the "central limits" of the original Start treaty before it expired last December, but it also documented several disputes over compliance.
For more than a year, the two largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons have been without the finely calibrated system of trust and verification which the original Start treaty from 1991 ensured.
The treaty, known as New Start, would forbid each country to deploy more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers seven years after ratification and resume on-site inspections that lapsed with the original Start treaty last December.
The two countries have been haggling over the new treaty for nearly a year and missed their self-imposed deadline of finishing by the time the original Start accord expired in December.
The rebuttal, as outlined by supporters, came to this: The pact places no meaningful limits on missile defense, and its verification would be stronger than that of the original Start treaty.
The treaty obliges each country to have no more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers deployed within seven years, and it provides for a resumption of on-site inspections, which halted when the original Start treaty expired last year.
Mr. Shultz has a powerful case as the architect of Mr. Reagan's rapprochement with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, which led to the breakthrough Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty and to negotiations that ultimately produced the original Start treaty, which was signed by Mr. Reagan's successor, George Bush.
5 51 p.m. | Updated Former President George H.W. Bush, who signed and won Senate approval of the original Start arms control treaty with the Soviet Union in 1991, endorsed the proposed follow-up treaty with Russia on Wednesday, lending another well-known Republican voice to the White House campaign for approval.
But by obstructing the treaty on such vague and flimsy grounds they look as though they are putting America's safety in jeopardy for partisan ends.The Senate approved the original START treaty 93-6, and the most recent nuclear-arms deal with Russia 95-0.
