U.S. signals flexibility on space weapons treaty
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay
July 13, 2010
The United States would consider a new global treaty to ban deployment of weapons in space if it meets its security concerns and includes safeguards against cheating, a U.S. arms control official said on Tuesday.
Frank Rose, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state, also indicated that any future pact must prohibit land-based anti-satellite systems — a technology favored by countries including China.
“We have not seen a space arms control treaty to date that meets the criteria that I laid out of equitability and effective verifiability,” Rose told a news briefing in Geneva after addressing the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament.
But he said that under the Obama administration’s new space policy, the United States would “consider space-related arms control concepts and proposals” that meet such criteria.
Diplomats and analysts welcomed the new U.S. position as a small but significant departure from policy under George W. Bush which opposed any space arms control. Brazil’s ambassador Luiz Filipe de Macedo Soares called it real progress. …
www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66C4K520100713?type=politicsNews
