In another example of small accomplishments being rolled out during this week's nuclear summit, the United States and Russia are planning a ceremony to mark the update of a plutonium disposal agreement that was originally agreed to 10 years ago.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will sign an "amendment" to what's known as the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Disposition Agreement Tuesday on the side of President Obama's ongoing Nuclear Security Summit.

The original agreement was signed toward the end of Bill Clinton's administration in 2000 by then Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Both sides agreed to destroy 34 metric tons of plutonium. But the agreement never went into force due to disputes about the international funding assistance Russia said it needed for implementation.

The agreement "is very significant in the sense that over a period of a decade or so it will remove very large quantities of weapons-useable materials, and also it's an agreement that's been long stalled," the National Security Council's Gary Samore said on an April 9 conference call. "It was really President Obama's focus on this issue and the reset of his relationship with Russia that has finally been able to finalize this agreement."

The United States will spend $400 million to transform the Russian plutonium involved under the deal, nuclear expert Matthew Bunn told the Irish Times.  

"This signing represents a major and essential step toward enabling full implementation of our two countries' obligation to safely and transparently dispose of such excess weapon-grade plutonium, enough material for several thousand nuclear weapons," the State Department said in a statement.

If the Kyrgyz opposition is able to maintain control after toppling the government, the Pentagon and State Department may have to renegotiate the U.S.-Kyrgyz agreement on a crucial U.S. air base there, experts warn.

It's only been a few months since the now-deposed Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbak Bakiyev, signed a new deal upping the rent on the Air Force Transit Center at Manas, which the U.S. depends on for critical supplies en route to Afghanistan.

Last February, there was a vote in the Kyrgyz parliament to end the arrangement, egged on by a Russia wary of the growing U.S. military presence in its near abroad. The man who led the opposition to the base in the legislature was former parliamentary speaker and opposition leader Omurbek Tekebaev, who now seems to be in control of the country, after being arrested and then released on Wednesday.

"We have to probably renegotiate the Manas basing agreement, because it was the opposition that pressured Bakiyev into renegotiating in the first place," said Alexandros Petersen, senior fellow with the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. "The leading opposition figures are not anti-American or more pro-Russian than anyone else in Kyrgyzstan, but because they led the drive to raise the rents they might have to reopen negotiations for political reasons."

And where there is a negotiation in Central Asia, there is a U.S.-Russia angle to worry about as well.

"This could be a relatively friendly negotiation, but the Russians could very well take the opportunity to meddle again," Petersen said.

Although Russia would have an interest in getting back at Bakiyev for finally striking a deal with the U.S., Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has condemned the violence and denied any Russian role in today's events.

Meanwhile, it's still "business as usual" at Manas, according to a U.S. military spokesman.

"As of right now the air base is still open, the unrest has not impact operations on the base," said Shawn Turner, Pentagon public affairs officer. "It's getting a little tense."

Turner said he had no information that Bakiyev, who took over from Askar Akayev during the 2005 "Tulip Revolution," was holing up at the U.S. base, despite some rumors in the capital city of Bishkek to that effect.

"Folks at Manas tell us that business as usual and if he was there, that would be something that we would be aware of," Turner said.

Petersen said he was hearing Bakiyev has taken refuge in his home turf of Osh, a city in southern Kyrgyzstan where he still has a power base. If he hasn't actually left the country, that could indicate the power struggle isn't over, he added.

The broader implication for the international community is the realization that the era of popular revolutions in Eurasia toppling unpopular government is still ongoing, and even democratic governments that don't live up to their ideals are vulnerable.

Although this latest unrest was sparked by the government's decision to raise utility prices by 200 percent, Bakiyev has been moving toward cronyism and corruption for some time, Petersen said.

"Color revolutions are not dead in this part of the world," he said, noting that what's going on in Kyrgyzstan has implications for Ukraine and Georgia. "If a color revolution goes authoritarian, you can have another revolution right on top of it."

During the most contentious moments of the U.S.-Russian negotiations over a new nuclear treaty, it often seemed as if Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were working at cross purposes.

Putin would make some public statements, usually about U.S. missile defense plans, that seemed to go far beyond what Medvedev and President Obama were saying publicly about how the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty would deal with the issue, leading to the view in Washington that Putin was playing the role of the spoiler.

Not so, according to two senior administration officials, who said that the negotiations changed the way the Obama White House viewed the roles of Medvedev and Putin.

"What we learned through this negotiation was that the policy coordination on their side between President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin was very closely done and in perfect lockstep every step of the way," said one official. "He was saying exactly what President Medvedev was saying to us in private. There was not daylight between them; they did things pretty closely coordinated."

The Kremlinology going on inside the White House shows both how opaque the Russian system is and why the new treaty was so important to the Obama administration, which remains unsure of Russia's troubled path from autocracy to pseudo-democracy.

"Russia is a pretty volatile place politically," another official said. "Who runs that country 10 years from now and what their foreign-policy views are, we may not be in a reset mode. So the things we can do to maintain transparency now is a hedge against those kinds of outcomes in the future."

Overall, it was the personal involvement of Medvedev and Obama that pushed the negotiations past difficult roadblocks at several stages, they said.

"The chief negotiator and the person who really got this treaty done was President Obama," one official said, pointing to over half a dozen phone calls between Obama and Medvedev at crucial moments. "The big moves in the negotiation were always done by the two of them."

For example, during one round of talks on Feb. 24, Obama took a hard stand against Russian attempts to have language regarding U.S. missile defense in the treaty, which would be a nonstarter for many Senate Republicans whose support will be needed for ratification.

"In a very tough phone call, he just said to President Medvedev, ‘If you want this, we have to walk away from this treaty, we can't do it this way,'" one official remembered. "It was a pretty dramatic moment, but in retrospect, we now know that because Obama was so firm in that phone call, we got some motion in Geneva [where the text of the treaty was being negotiated] from that moment on."

When the two presidents spoke on March 26, when the treaty was finally complete, Medvedev began his call by saying in English, "If you want to get something done right, do it yourself." Obama replied, "Yeah, we were the ones who did it."

The administration officials also spelled out in detail how the new treaty will deal with the thorny missile-defense issue. There will be one line in the preamble of the treaty acknowledging that there is a connection between offensive and defensive weapons, and that's it.

There "could" be unilateral statements by each side about missile defense, the officials said, as if they weren't sure.

"If they were done, what would happen is the Russians would recognize that if the United States missile defense capabilities grew to such an extent that it would undermine strategic stability, they would have the right to withdraw from the treaty," one official said.

"If they did release such a unilateral statement, we would issue our unilateral statement that would say our missile defenses aren't aimed against Russia and are not intended to undermine strategic stability, but we are going to do them in cooperation with our allies irrespective of what the Russian unilateral statement says."

Did you know there will be massive human rights protests across Russia this Saturday? Well, John McCain is all over the situation.

McCain, who famously declared "We are all Georgians" during the August War of 2008, gave a speech on the Senate floor calling on all Americans to get involved in the cause of human rights in Russia and lambasting the Kremlin for its harsh treatment of opposition and activist leaders.

"This is about universal values -- values that we in the United States embody but do not own ... values that should shape the conduct of every government, be it ours or Russia's or any other country's," McCain said, "And when we see citizens of conviction seeking to hold their governments to the higher standard of human rights, we should speak up for them."

McCain hasn't given up the cause of the Georgians since the end of the presidential campaign. He visited the country in January and made a stop at the border of the breakaway region of Abkhazia, where Russian troops still remain.

"I know that Washington has a lot of foreign-policy challenges at the moment, but we cannot forget Georgia and the support it deserves amid a continuing threat from its neighbor to the north," he said.

Back in 2008, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared McCain a "national hero" of Georgia when he visited in January and gave him a Vietnam-war revolver (pictured) that was captured off a Russian soldier at the ceremony.

McCain also recently met with opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in Washington. When McCain asked Nemtsov what Americans could do to support human rights activists in Russia, Nemtsov said, "Speak up for it. And speak up for us." 

Here's what the State Department's newly released report on human rights practices had to say about Russia:

• "Direct and indirect government interference in local and regional elections restricted the ability of citizens to change their government through free and fair elections."
• "During the year there were a number of high profile killings of human rights activists by unknown persons, apparently for reasons related to their professional activities. There were numerous, credible reports that law enforcement personnel engaged in physical abuse of subjects. Prison conditions were harsh and could be life threatening."
• "Eight journalists, many of whom reported critically on the government, were killed during the year; with one exception the government failed to identify, arrest, or prosecute any suspects. Beating and intimidation of journalists remained a problem."
• "The government limited freedom of assembly, and police sometimes used violence to prevent groups from engaging in peaceful protest."

Congress could ratify a new nuclear treaty with Russia this year, although that is going to be no easy task, four leading senators told The Cable in separate, exclusive interviews Tuesday.

The delay in the signing of the treaty, known as "New START," combined with the Russian decision to temporarily get up from the table, has led many on Capitol Hill -- on both sides of the aisle -- to argue that there is just not enough time to go through a lengthy treaty ratification process that Congress hasn't attempted in years. Many are skeptical that leading critics of the process will allow the ratification to go through, even when it reaches the Hill.

Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-MA, who will be responsible for shepherding the treaty through the Senate, said its survival will depend on when it actually materializes  and whether the administration is able to keep contentious issues like missile defense out of the document.

"It depends on when we get it; we haven't seen it," Kerry said. "The administration is appropriately holding out for what we need to make the treaty verifiable and that will help it pass."

Kerry said there are legitimate disagreements with the Russians, mainly over how to address U.S. missile defense plans, but the administration has to continue to try to minimize the presence of issues that could provoke a backlash among leading GOP Senators such as Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, who has been wrangling with the State Department over the negotiations.

"If the agreement is hailed as being pretty solid and doesn't set up a number of questions about America's security that can be exploited in the context of the debate, it could pass," Kerry said. "If it has those kinds of questions, it could be problematic."

As for whether there are 67 votes for it in the Senate, Kerry said, "I have no idea."

His counterpart, committee ranking Republican Richard Lugar, R-IN, was actually more optimistic.

"I remain hopeful that it will be signed and that there will be time assigned on the floor for debate and a vote this year," said Lugar, who added he would support the treaty "unless there are extraordinary changes beyond those that I've heard about."

He said it was not a foregone conclusion that Republican senators like Kyl, John McCain, R-AZ, and Joseph Lieberman, I-CT, would oppose the treaty, despite their written objection to the latest reports that Russia is planning to issue a unilateral statement reserving the right to withdraw from the new treaty if U.S. missile defense plans upset "strategic stability."

McCain told The Cable Wednesday he would be "adamantly opposed to including anything that has to do with missile defense, in anything," even a unilateral statement aside the treaty.

"Apparently we were very close to an agreement and it seems like there is some insistence on their part to include missile defense in some way," McCain said of the Russians, adding, "Jon Kyl and I find that totally unacceptable."

Another important player in the debate is Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Robert Casey, Jr., D-PA, who is taking on an increased role in nuclear issues. He was more optimistic than any of his counterparts about the prospects for ratification this year.

"I think we can do it and I think we should," Casey said. "Often in Washington the pronouncement of what's dead and what's alive is fiction. I think we can pass it and I think we should try to pass it."

"I don't think we have 67 votes today," Casey admitted. But he said vote counting should wait until the administration and the treaty's advocates have a chance to really push the debate.

"I don't underestimate the difficulty of making progress on START," Casey said.

A new gambit by Russia to link missile defense to a still-pending nuclear arms agreement is threatening to throw another wrench into plans to quickly sign and pass the deal in Congress.

The U.S.-Russian negotiations over the update to the recently expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty were supposed to be separate from the fraught issue of American missile defenses in Europe. After all, that's what Presidents Obama and Medvedev agreed to when they met in July.

Since then, Russian officials including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have explicitly linked U.S. missile defense plans to the treaty. Now, two sources who were briefed on the negotiations say the Russians intend to release a statement declaring their right to unilaterally withdraw from the new agreement if they believe U.S. missile defense deployments upset "strategic stability."

Nothing's final until announced, but three key senators are already warning that they can't go along with that. In a not-yet-released letter obtained exclusively by The Cable, Arizona Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain, and Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, warn National Security Advisor James L. Jones, "Even as a unilateral declaration, a provision like this would put pressure on the United States to limit its systems or their deployment because of Russian threats of withdrawal from the treaty."

The State Department won't comment on the record about classified negotiations, but says that such side statements are commonplace.

"Anybody who knows anything about treaties knows that it is customary to be able to withdraw for reasons pertaining to one's national interest, so there's nothing new or diabolical here," said Jonathan Kaplan, a spokesman for Ellen Tauscher, the department's top arms-control official.

After all, the U.S. did withdraw unilaterally from the anti-ballistic missile treaty when the Bush administration concluded it was no longer in American interests. And besides, the Obama administration's plan for missile defense in Europe is not aimed at Russia, State insists. In fact, the Obama administration has made efforts to stake out areas of cooperation with Russia, although those have met with limited success.

France's announcement that it will sell an advanced amphibious assault ship to Russia should not complicate ongoing negotiations over Iran sanctions, according to the State Department's top spokesman.

Lawmakers had threatened that if the French government went through with the sale, which would be the first major arms sale to Russia from a NATO country, they would retaliate by resisting administration efforts to exempt France and other countries from sanctions in the Iran legislation making its way through Congress.

It was never clear how serious the threat was, but nonetheless the administration says it will insist on the exemptions, despite the French decision.

"I wouldn't blend the two together," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who noted that negotiations between the administration and lawmakers over Chris Dodd's Iran sanctions legislation are ongoing.

"One of the issues we will be talking to Congress about is to make sure the president has sufficient flexibility to be able to work with other countries effectively for our shared goal of finding ways to put appropriate pressure on Iran to change course," Crowley added.

The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent late last month but the administration will argue for its changes when the bill meets the House version in conference. That conference is not expected until after the administration pursues a new U.N. resolution on Iran.

As for the weapons deal with Russia, "obviously is it something we will consult with the French on and other countries in the region," said Crowley, referring to statements by Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday, who was in Paris. Gates signaled American displeasure with the decision but declined to specify what the U.S. might do about it, if anything.

France's announcement that it will sell the Mistral-class amphibious assault ship to Russia comes at a delicate time for U.S. relations with and Russia, not to mention Georgia, which sees the ship as a potential threat.

Almost every article about the Mistral quotes Russian Adm. Vladimir Vysotskiy, who said in September that the ship "would have allowed [Russia's] Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes" during the 2008 Georgia war, "not 26 hours which is how long it took us."

Russian leaders have distanced themselves from Vysotskiy's statement, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear he will not foreswear using the Mistral wherever his government pleases.

When The Cable reported in October that there were severe problems with the U.S.-Russian agreement to transit war supplies over Russian space to Afghanistan, the Obama administration was not happy.

Sure, there were some "technical details" to be worked out, U.S. officials said, but that was par for the course and would be smoothed over soon. So now, half a year after the deal was signed, how many flights have gone off?

Only one, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Radio Free Europe.

To be fair, the American side disputes that figure. U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John Beyrle said, "In fact there were five, and 11 more are planned."

But that's still somewhat short of the 4,500 flights per year that were expected when Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev made the agreement in July.

"Hard to see this as a particularly major achievement of a revived relationship," writes Politico's Ben Smith.

New York Times reporter Peter Baker had some good details on what the problems were and some sharp analysis as well:

The agreement to allow American troops and weapons to fly over the territory of Russia, its onetime cold war enemy, was seen as a symbolic breakthrough as much as a logistical one, and administration officials argued that it was a triumph even if no planes actually ever used the route. Still, just as some people in Moscow appear apprehensive about American forces in their airspace, some American officials are wary of putting too much faith in the Russians, who could easily close down the corridor if political tension rises again.

With Barack Obama's pledge to rid the world of nuclear weapons faltering out of the starting gate, leaders of the arms-control community convened a major meeting Tuesday to gear up for their biggest fights in years. The next few months will be critical, insiders say, with a number of key international treaties up for renewal and battle lines being drawn in Washington and abroad.

About 50 senior think tank and advocacy executives packed the K Street conference room of the Ploughshares Fund to strategize and rally the troops for the upcoming policy war. "This is going to be the fight of our lives," Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione told The Cable shortly after the meeting concluded.

A huge part of the effort will be to hold the administration to the ambitious arms-control agenda President Obama laid out in his Prague speech last April.

"The debate on Washington on these issues has been dominated by the conservatives because the administration has yet to take the field," Cirincione said. "That's about to change ... finally!"

The next six months will see either the significant advancement or the defeat of a host of arms-control priorities. The agenda includes ratification of the still-pending START follow-on agreement with Russia, the February release of the president's budget, the March release of the Nuclear Posture Review, a major summit on nuclear terrorism in Washington in April, and the Nonproliferation Treaty conference in May. A push for U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is also coming.

The Obama administration has been occupied with other crises and not eager to take on nuclear issues despite a heartfelt belief in their merit, Cirincione said. "They want to play it safe." The administration's window for action is open but small. By the end of summer, the congressional elections will crowd out Washington's bandwidth.

"If it doesn't get done by July, it doesn't get done," he said.

So the meeting, which included representatives from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Arms Control Association, the Council for a Livable World, the Federation of American Scientists, and others, was about marshalling those organizations' combined resources and preparing a full-on campaign to press their shared goals now.

The loosely organized group's strategy is fourfold: Push out facts and talking points supporting nuclear-weapons reductions into the press, increase the profile of the military, business, and religious leaders who back lower numbers of nuclear weapons, push sympathetic senators to be more active, and rally potential allies to the cause.

"There's really no secret to how you go about doing this, Cirincione said. "The trick is actually doing it." Crucial Senate allies include John Kerry, D-MA, Robert Casey, D-PA, Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, Jack Reed, D-RI, and Byron Dorgan, D-ND, while conservatives such as Jon Kyl, R-AZ, and James Inhofe, R-OK, are set to press the administration for maximum concessions before letting any arms control action go through the Senate.

The advocates worry that such conservatives have controlled the debate over arms control, and that they need to shift to more of a hard-nosed Washington approach in response. Sources noted that Ploughshares has hired the Glover Park Group public relations firm to aid its messaging.

There's also a growing realization that continued delays in the negotiations over the START follow-on agreement with Russia mean that time is running out before the summer election season begins.

An agreement with the Russians could come this month, with debate in the Senate by the end of March. But, as The Cable has previously reported, another Senate debate over CTBT before July is seen as much more unlikely.

Regardless, the arms-control community is girding for the fight. "It was a call to action meeting and this high-level group is primed to put the expertise and resources of our organizations behind the effort," said the Arms Control Association's Daryl Kimball.

Vladimir Putin deliberately threw a wrench into U.S.-Russian negotiations over a follow-on to the START nuclear reductions treaty yesterday when he explicitly linked the issue to U.S. missile-defense plans.

But what's not mentioned in these otherwise excellent articles by the New York Times' Ellen Barry and the Washington Times' Eli Lake on the development is that the prime minister's comments directly contradict the July 6 joint statement of U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who made it clear that missile defense would be dealt with separately from the START follow-on talks.

Moreover, in their July 8 Joint Understanding, the carefully negotiated compromise was spelled out. The START follow-on would include "a provision on the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms," nothing more, nothing less. Multiple senior administration officials have told The Cable that this compromise was well understood to mean that missile defense would be delinked from the START negotiations -- and that was the assumption the American team led by Rose Gottemoeller was working under.

Some on the Obama team are now suggesting they have already factored in these types of games coming from the Russian side.

"This is not unexpected and negotiations will resume in mid-January as we have said they would," said an administration source familiar with where things stand.

So what's going on? Well, there are two schools of thought among Russia experts. One is that Putin's comments represent a clear difference between his view of U.S.-Russia relations and Medvedev's. Medvedev, who is supposed to be in control of foreign policy, is more conciliatory and wants genuine rapprochement, the argument goes, whereas Putin ... not so much.

Under this theory, there are two power structures in Moscow and they are jockeying for control. But even in this analysis, time and time again, Putin seems to win the day by making the final decision.

"Perhaps there is a power struggle, but if there is, it's being overwhelmingly won and controlled by Putin's faction," said Alexandros Petersen, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "Supposedly the idea was that Medvedev would tackle these types of issues. But then all the sudden Putin steps in and completely undermines him. Every time the going gets tough, Putin steps in and takes the reins."

The competing theory is that Putin and Medvedev are working somewhat in lockstep, again with Putin calling the shots and benefiting from the illusion of a power split. For Putin, it's useful to have Medvedev out there as the nice guy (aided by the fact that he may genuinely want to cooperate), setting up a good cop/bad cop routine. That catches Western officials off guard and makes it convenient for Putin because he can wait until negotiations with Medvedev play out and then make his move at the eleventh hour.

The bottom line is that the START talks now seem to be at an impasse. Since the administration doesn't deal directly as much with Putin's faction, resolving the dispute is problematic. And although the Obama team denies that its adjustment of plans to deploy missile defense to Poland and the Czech Republic was a concession to Russia, it would be a tough sell domestically to make any further concessions on missile defense and still get START ratified in the Senate.

So what can the administration do? Petersen recalls a similar incident when Ronald Reagan was negotiating the original START agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik. Gorby demanded that START be linked to U.S. missile defense and Reagan said it was not negotiable and walked out of the room.

"The result of Reagan taking a hard line was that it wasn't linked from the beginning," said Petersen.

More broadly, the question is: What do the current problems with the START process say about Obama's pledge to reset relations with Russia? Perhaps that Russia is looking at the long term and isn't confident that Obama's overtures will be continued by successive administrations.

"They view Obama as somewhat of an anomaly in U.S. foreign policy, and START is for decades," Petersen said.

For the U.S. side, this might also change the calculation about giving Russia concessions before a negotiation is near completion.

"You give them a finger and they take an arm," said Petersen. "With this statement [from Putin], the debate has shifted completely."

"It would certainly make the treaty dead on arrival in the Senate," said one senior GOP Senate aide, who added that senators will be watching to make sure the Obama administration won't cut any side agreements involving the missile-defense program.

Have you heard of the French ship called the Mistral? Well, you're about to. Several senior members of the U.S. Congress are becoming heavily involved in trying to thwart the possible sale of the Mistral from France to Russia.

The Mistral is France's state-of-the-art amphibious assault ship, and discussions of selling it to the Russian Federation have been causing angst in European capitals for months. The sale would be the first significant arms transfer from a NATO country to Russia and what's more, the Russians have already indicated that it could be used in future operations in countries in its near abroad, such as Georgia, which it invaded last year.

Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy said in September that "In the conflict in August last year [against Georgia], a ship like that would have allowed [Russia's] Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not 26 hours which is how long it took us [to land the troops ashore]."

This is just one of the concerns that prompted Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to introduce a bill late Thursday that would express the sense of Congress that "France and other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union should decline to sell major weapons systems or offensive military equipment to the Russian Federation."

The resolution alleges that Russia remains in violation of the French-brokered ceasefire that followed the Georgia invasion. Also, Russia is expanding its military presence in a way that threatens Georgia, and has made a number of aggressive moves toward several countries in the region, according to the text. The sale of the Mistral to Russia "would enhance that country's ability to potentially wage aggression against its neighbors," the resolution states.

Ros-Lehtinen is calling on President Obama, as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to urge France not to sell major offensive weapons systems to Russia until Russia completely withdraws from Georgian territory and makes broad reforms in areas ranging from rule of law to human rights.

The bill has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration, but that's only the beginning of coming U.S. congressional involvement on the issue. Multiple Senate aides tell The Cable that several senators from both sides of the aisle are busily drafting a letter to the French Embassy calling on France to hold off on the sale. That letter is expected early next week.

There goes the neighborhood?

The 650-foot long Mistral is the second largest vessel in the French Navy and each one is capable of carrying up to 16 helicopters, tanks, land assault vehicles, and 900 troops.

In addition to Georgia, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are also concerned about the Russians buying such a ship, especially from their fellow NATO and EU member France. Serious discussions have been initiated within NATO by these states about the possible deal.

"I'll say it quite bluntly --it has implications for NATO's security, because of what we saw last year," Marko Mikhelson, chairman of the European affairs committee in Estonia's Parliament, told the New York Times.

Despite that, the French sailed a Mistral directly past these states to the port of St. Petersburg last month to show off the ship for the Russian government. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin refused to rule out using the ship against the Baltics on his recent trip to Paris.

"Whoever we buy it from, we will reserve the right to use it where and when we consider necessary," he said.

The Baltic states have protection as part of NATO and the EU. Georgia? Not so much. A senior Georgian government official spoke with The Cable about that country's concerns about the sale.

"We have experienced ourselves that Russia is capable of using military force against its neighbors," the official said, pointing out that Georgia has less ability to build international support for their opposition to the deal.

A French Embassy spokesman told The Cable that the sale of a Mistral-class ship to Russia is still a project and no decision has been made by either the Russians or the French.

"There is a Russian request and we see no reason to refuse considering that request, which will be examined with all the necessary precautions as part of the military equipment export control regulatory procedures and will take time," the spokesman said.

He pointed out France has used Mistral-class ships for humanitarian missions and to evacuate nationals from dangerous situations.

The French have also have made the argument that selling arms to Russia is needed for peace and stability in Europe. "It would be impossible to call for continental stability in partnership with Russia if we refuse to sell armaments to Russia. A refusal would amount to contradicting our own discourse," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon reportedly said.

And while the French have said they would sell a scaled-down version of the Mistral without some weapons and advanced-control technologies, American defense experts warn that the sale could start a chain reaction of European states selling sensitive military technologies to Russia to shore up their struggling defense industries.

"Given the shrinking defense budgets of European countries and the pressure to keep domestic defense firms from going under by expanding exports, there is little question that less and less restraint would be shown by competing governments and companies on what could be sold to Moscow," wrote Gary Schmitt, defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Moreover, "there is the signal such a sale would send Moscow about just how unserious the West is in holding Russia's feet to fire over its invasion of Georgia and the terms of the subsequent agreement," he said.

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images

Barack Obama did in fact deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, former prize winner and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev said in an exclusive interview with Radio Free Europe.

"I won it unexpectedly and he won it unexpectedly," Gorby told the U.S. government-funded outlet based in Prague. "America means a lot [to the world] and will continue to do so for a long time ... That's why [we have to] support a president of such stature, who gave his own country and the world such a strong push forward. And it's already showing real effects. That's honorable."

The former leader also talks about the state of Russian democracy, the Russian opposition, and corruption in the Russian government. RFE characterizes Gorbachev's role and reputiation:

Hugely popular abroad, Gorbachev has long been widely disliked at home for bringing about the end of communism. He remained active in politics, co-founding the Social Democratic Party. But when he ran for president in 1996, he won less than 1 percent of the vote.

Since Putin's rise to power in 2000, Gorbachev has often been among the first to criticize new authoritarian measures in Russia, especially restrictions against the free press, independent politicians, and nongovernmental organizations. But he's been a consistently ardent supporter of the man many believe responsible for the country's direction: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Check out the video here:

Frantzesco Kangaris/Getty Image

As the Obama administration negotiates with Russia over a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, Senate Republicans are already planning their strategy to demand maximum concessions in exchange for their potential support.

The Senate Republican Policy Committee, led by South Dakota's John Thune, shown at left, is circulating a memo (pdf) outlining the GOP strategy to deal with the "follow on" to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires December 5. According to the memo, obtained by The Cable, the Republicans have a long list of demands, some of which are unlikely to be met when the administration rolls out the new agreement.

"A treaty meeting the goals articulated in this paper is more likely to gain the two-thirds majority necessary for Senate consent," the memo explains.

The differences between administration plans and GOP demands are likely to complicate the push for ratification in the Senate, which is expected early next year.

The core strategy for the Senate Republicans will be to try to frame the nuclear reductions as a unilateral concession that President Obama is making to the Russians.

"The United States should not pay for what is free," the memo states. "Russia's nuclear numbers will decline dramatically in the coming years with or without an arms control treaty. The United States should not make important concessions in return for something that will happen in any event."

Republicans will also call on Obama to justify the arms reductions in the context of American security interests, not simply U.S.-Russia relations.

"Russia needs this agreement far more than the U.S. does. It is desperately trying to lock the U.S. into lower nuclear levels, not the other way around."

GOP senators such as minority whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ, have been accusing Obama of rushing to get an agreement, a theme the strategy memo says will continue as Republicans argue that an extension of the old terms is preferable to a bad treaty.

Specifically, the memo sets three basic conditions for Republican support.

First, the new treaty should not constrain U.S. missile defenses, the GOP senators argue, nor should it impinge upon the military's plans to develop what's called "global strike" capabilities -- the ability to attack any target in the world at any time.

In a previous interview with The Cable, a senior administration official said there would be no specific treaty language on missile defense, but that some verification of conventional systems such as those used in global strike might be covered in the final version.

Secondly, Republicans are demanding the administration submit a modernization plan for the nation's nuclear stockpile at the same time as the treaty. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher has said that such a plan will be submitted in next year's budget but will not include the Bush administration's proposal for building a new type of nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead.

The third condition, the one the administration won't be able to deliver to Republicans, is their call for Russian tactical nuclear weapons to be covered in the new treaty. The senior official had said that would not be part of these negotiations, but could be covered in the next treaty, what insiders are calling "the follow on to the follow on."

The administration's negotiating team, led by Rose Gottemoeller, the assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation, has been traveling back and forth to Geneva to negotiate terms with the Russians.

And Tauscher is testifying today to the House Armed Services Committee on the administration's recent decision to alter missile-defense plans in Europe, a decision she maintains was also not a concession to Russia.

"Nothing that we did had anything to do with Russian saber-rattling or their consternation about the ground-based interceptors or the Czech radar. The decision was not part of any trade-off or quid pro quo," Tauscher said, adding, "If, as a consequence of President Obama's decision, relations with Russia improve, then we should embrace that benefit."

UPDATE: The Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation's Kingston Reif writes in to point out that while the GOP strategy memo quotes the Perry-Schlesinger Commission more than two dozen times, it never mentions that the group of bipartisan elders actually endorses the START follow-on process. Here's a quote from the report:

"The moment appears ripe for a renewal of arms control with Russia, and this bodes well for a continued reduction in the nuclear arsenal. The United States and Russia should pursue a step-by-step approach and take a modest first step to ensure that there is a successor to START I when it expires at the end of 2009."

FILE; Mark Wilson/Getty Images

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of today's briefing by spokesman Ian Kelly:

• The Royal New Zealand Air Force, came to the aid of an ill American in Antarctica, sending a C-130 Hercules aircraft from Christchurch to make the rescue at the McMurdo research station there. Thanks!
• The State Department "worked closely with the producers" of the ABC news report about the sex tape involving Kyle Hatcher, an aide to U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle in Russia. "We believe, as Amb. Beyrle said in the interview, that he has been the subject of a smear campaign using -- using the Russian press. And of course, this kind of campaign is disgusting and deplorable," said Kelly, adding "it's an example of the continuation of a Cold War mentality." Doesn't look that cold in the video to me! (rim shot)
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently didn't tell the State Department directly what he said publicly yesterday about allowing his nuclear scientists to meet with inspectors. "We do want to sit down with them and have a serious exchange and find out if, indeed, they -- they're ready to open up their nuclear program," said Kelly. Do I detect a note of skepticism?
• The Burma policy review could be out as early as tomorrow, Kelly said, previewing the administration's new policy of "pressure and engagement." Kelly explained, "we believe that sanctions have a place in our policy, but sanctions or isolation has not, in and of themselves, produced the kind of results that we've been looking for. Senator Jim Webb, get ready to be happy.
• No real movement to report on the stalemate at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where ousted president Manuel Zelaya is hiding out. "The situation, I hate to use a cliché, is calm but tense," Kelly said. Since when does Ian hate to use clichés!