THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 17, 1995 TAG: 9503170510
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Inspectors from Russia are scheduled to visit the Atlantic Fleet training center at Dam Neck this morning as part of the first verification visits under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
This is the first month the inspections are allowed under the treaty, which took effect in December. To guarantee surprise, the treaty requires that inspection teams be escorted to the United States within nine hours after they give notice.
The team visiting the Virginia Beach base arrived Sunday.
The Dam Neck site is Raborn Hall, a building formerly occupied by the Naval Guided Missiles School. The school, closed in September, trained sailors to repair and maintain the Trident I missile system, one of the weapons subject to inspection under the treaty.
The treaty requires the United States and parts of the former Soviet Union to limit intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. The number of weapons must be reduced from about 9,000 to 6,000 by 2002.
Inspections will be conducted during a two-month window of opportunity in the United States, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine. The visits are meant to verify the accuracy and completeness of weapons information exchanged by the two sides.
On Tuesday, inspectors from the former Soviet Union visited King's Bay submarine base in Georgia, home of Navy ballistic missile submarines. Earlier, a separate team that arrived on the West Coast visited Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and Camp Navajo in Arizona.
Teams eventually will cover 36 U.S. sites. U.S. teams, meantime, are inspecting some of the 72 nuclear sites identified in the former Soviet Union. by CNB