On the recordDecember 21, 2010
I would have preferred to deal with each of the subjects in this amendment individually because each one is very important. To accommodate the other side's desire to try to get as much done as quickly as possible, we consolidated some amendments, and there is a lot in this. I regret that we don't have time to get into detail about each one of them. This amendment amounts to an effort to try to improve the verification of the treaty to deal with a variety of issues which have been raised in the past and which we believe are inadequately dealt with by the treaty. One of them involves covers, the kinds of things the then-Soviet Union and now Russians consistently put over the warheads so that it is impossible for our inspectors to see what is under them, to see how many warheads are under them. That has been a problem in the past. On telemetry, we say the President should certify to the Senate that he has reached a legally binding agreement with the Russian Federation so that each party is obliged to provide full and unimpeded access to its telemetry from all flight tests of strategic missiles limited by the treaty. That is important because while we are not developing a new generation of missiles, the Russians are. We will be denied the telemetry of those missile tests if the Russians decide to deny it. Our intelligence community has told us that this is of great value to us in assessing the capabilities of Russian missiles.
