28
With Courage and Persistence
agree on any arrangement for the treaty, the nuclear weapons
or the new nations’ non-proliferation status.
18
Two recent
CIS summit meetings had failed. Russian ministers had set
up the meetings, announced the agenda and controlled the
discussions. When other nations objected, they argued and
disagreed. No issues were resolved. Adding to this evidence of
regional disarray, Nunn and Lugar led a small delegation to
the region in March; and they reported to President Bush that
confusion and disagreement existed among the CIS states,
especially over the issues of nuclear forces and weapons.
19
They believed that United States’ capacity to influence events
was quite limited. As evidence, Senator Nunn said he found
at the new U.S. Embassy in Kiev only one foreign service
officer trying to handle all the complex, multifaceted issues
with the new Ukrainian government.
20
These developments
and the Senators Nunn and Lugar’s report led Secretary Baker
to initiate a new round of diplomacy. Baker’s solution was to
draft and negotiate a new treaty protocol, one that made all
five nations a signatory party to the START Treaty, but with
assurances that the three non-Russian nations would give up
their nuclear weapons and accede to the Non-Proliferation
Treaty. U.S. diplomats took drafts of the new treaty protocol
to each capital. Secretary Baker telephoned senior ministers
in Kiev, Almaty, Minsk and Moscow, repeatedly. President
Bush invited presidents Kravchuk of Ukraine and Nazarbayev
of Kazakhstan to Washington for discussions at the White
House.
21
U.S. solution: Lisbon Protocols
Ukraine emerged as the key nation since it refused to cede
to Russia’s authority to be the Soviet Union’s successor state
for the START Treaty. Following their White House meeting
in May, Bush and Kravchuk issued a joint statement in which
the Ukrainian president declared his nation would renounce
its nuclear weapons, join the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a
non-nuclear weapons state, and sign and ratify the START
Treaty. Further, Kravchuk pledged to remove all his nation’s
strategic nuclear weapons within seven years following
parliament’s ratification of the treaty. President Bush stated
the United States would recognize Ukraine as a treaty
signatory state, equal with all other signatory nations.
22
One
START I Inspection Team at Russian military base
National Archives - Still Picture Branch
29
legal interpretation of this international recognition held that
Ukraine, and by implications the other signatory nations,
“owned” the nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers, and
infrastructure located physically on their territory. If that
were true, then returning these military forces and nuclear
warheads to another nation (Russia), or eliminating them
on-site in compliance with START, could raise a series of new
issues between the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and
Kazakhstan.
Using this U.S.-Ukraine joint statement as leverage,
Baker secured commitments from the other presidents
in May 1992. Their nations would be designated in a new
treaty protocol as “successor” states to the Soviet Union
for the START I Treaty. As such, they would have rights,
responsibilities and expenses under the treaty. They could
send their national on-site inspectors to verify elimination
of weapons systems in other nations; they were entitled to
a seat on a special treaty verification committee; and they
had to eliminate all the treaty-identified weapons located
on their territory within seven years following ratification.
All these rights and responsibilities were spelled out in the
new treaty protocol. Following intense negotiations with
the foreign ministers and presidents, Baker secured their
agreement to meet in Lisbon, Portugal on May 23, 1992
to
sign the new treaty protocol. As they did so, all five nations
became signatory states, turning the treaty from a bilateral
to a multilateral arms reduction agreement. The three non-
Russian nations committed to accede to the NPT Treaty “in
the shortest possible time” as non-nuclear states.
23
As part of the negotiations, Baker insisted that Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and Belarus provide a letter signed by their
presidents stating explicitly that their government would
sign and ratify the NPT Treaty and would declare themselves
as non-nuclear states. These presidential letters, the Lisbon
Protocol, and the START Treaty became the basis for the U.S.
Senate’s 93-6 ratification of the treaty in October 1992.
24
When the Russian Duma ratified the START Treaty 157-1 in
early November, it added explicit reservations that the three
non-Russian nations had to sign and ratify the NPT Treaty
before implementation would begin in Russia.
25
Secretary of State James A. Baker and President George H.W. Bush
George Bush Presidential Library
