Washington's nuclear maneuver
18:59 | 28/ 08/ 2008
- Quoting anonymous sources, the Western media are making a stir by saying that the United States is ready to freeze the intergovernmental agreement with Russia for peaceful nuclear cooperation because of the Georgian conflict.
The Financial Times called the agreement one of the obvious victims of the tensions between Washington and Moscow, which have rarely been so high since the end of the Cold War.
Japanese publications are even more pessimistic. They believe that a step toward freezing the agreement raises a question mark over the future of bilateral nuclear cooperation.
However, Russia and the United States have been cooperating in the nuclear sphere for many years, and nobody is going to cancel their contacts. The two great powers guarantee nuclear non-proliferation and development of civilian nuclear power industry. The agreement in question was signed on May 6 of this year.
This agreement establishes basic principles of cooperation in the nuclear sphere, and is designed to provide a legal foundation for direct contacts between Russian and American companies in civilian use of nuclear energy. Before, all business in this sphere was based on exclusive intergovernmental agreements, whereas this document will allow American and Russian companies to cooperate without asking their presidents for signatures on every occasion.
Businessmen have been waiting for this agreement for many years. Its absence was due to political rather than economic reasons. The vestiges of the Cold War were not fully overcome, and the confrontation between the two powers in the super-sensitive nuclear sphere politicized even civilian programs.
However, the situation has changed since then. Both possessing considerable nuclear potential, the United States and Russia decided to remove political obstacles and develop a mutually advantageous partnership. The agreement was signed by Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power (Rosatom), and U.S. Ambassador William Burns, who said that the two former rivals in this sphere were now partners.
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