Hatch should back treaty

The Dec. 5 expiration of our previous arms control agreement with Russia, START 1, has brought to a standstill the on-the-ground monitoring and verification of Russian nuclear weapons arsenals responsible for ensuring U.S. national security for the past 15 years. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was initially signed in April, in an attempt to recover the monitoring and verification regimes from the expired START 1 agreement. However, New START has hit a partisan barrier in the Senate that is proving more formidable than the Cold War was to the first negotiators of START 1.

The Senate's partisan cold war has done what the most ardent Russian communists couldn't do 15 years earlier, and that's to completely freeze the flow of critical information regarding U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons arsenals between the two nations. There are currently 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence: That's 23,000 reasons for the Senate to overcome partisan divisions and take a modest step towards a safer world by ratifying New START. I hope Sen. Orrin Hatch joins Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and Bob Bennett in moving beyond partisan politics by working to ratify New START and thus renewing the exchange of information allowing us a critical insight into Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal.

Nancy Carruthers

Salt Lake City