STRATEGIC ARMS REDUCTION TALKS

(START) negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union that were aimed at reducing those two countries' arsenals of nuclear warheads and of the missiles and bombers capable of delivering such weapons. The START negotiations were successors to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1970s. In resuming strategic-arms negotiations with the Soviet Union in 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan renamed the talks START and proposed radical reductions, rather than merely limitations, in each superpower's existing stocks of missiles and warheads. After a hiatus during 198385, START negotiations resumed in the latter year and culminated in July 1991 with a comprehensive strategic arms-reduction agreement agreed to by U.S. President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The treaty called for the Soviets to reduce their arsenal of nuclear warheads and bombs from about 11,000 to 8,000 (a reduction of 25 percent), while the United States would reduce its stocks of such weapons from about 12,000 to 10,000 (a 15-percent reduction). Reductions were specifically mandated for the numbers of strategic missiles, heavy bombers, and mobile launchers that each side could have. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, negotiations between the United States and Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan led to a supplementary agreement, signed on May 23, 1992, by which the parties pledged to adhere to the 1991 treaty and by which Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan agreed to either destroy their strategic nuclear warheads or turn them over to Russia.