Russia seals accession to membership with nuclear deal

Western leaders yesterday agreed to spend $20bn (£13bn) over the next decade to destroy discarded nuclear material in Russia, long identified as the biggest single risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into terrorist hands.

Under the arrangement, the US will put up $10bn, while the rest will come from the European Union, Japan and Canada. The arrangements were finalised at a bilateral meeting at the G8 summit of leading world powers between President George Bush and the Russian President, Valdimir Putin.

After eleventh-hour haggling, Moscow agreed to allow its seven partners access to disposal sites such as nuclear submarine and submarine waste facilities such as the Kola peninsula in north-west Russia. It is also allowing them to make fuller audits of its nuclear material than before, thus overcoming one of the prime obstacles to co-operation.

Though its nuclear weapons are considered adequately protected, Russia does not have the capacity to reprocess or destroy power units from decommissioned nuclear submarines and from its civil nuclear stations. One recent estimate was that only 35 per cent of such material is accounted for. America's fear has long been that some of it might fall into terrorist hands, perhaps speeded on its way by underpaid scientists trained in Soviet times. Those anxieties were compounded this month with news of an alleged al- Qa'ida plot to assemble a radioactive "dirty bomb" to be detonated in Washington DC.

The deal seals a big week for Russia in the G8. After more than a decade of apprenticeship, beginning when the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was invited to observe the 1991 G7 meeting in Britain, Russia has been formally anointed here as a full member of the group. It will now host the annual summit in Moscow in 2006.

The move is yet another sign of Russia's integration into the global system – a process which has accelerated under Mr Putin, especially since the attacks of 11 September thrust the US and Russia into the same corner in the fight against terrorism.

During their Moscow meeting last month, Mr Bush and Mr Putin agreed to slash their nuclear arsenals from the existing 6,500 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. Some of the weapons will merely be de-activated and put into storage. Others though will have to be destroyed, lending added importance to yesterday's $20bn G8 agreement.