[Presidential Decision Directives - PDD]
Strengthening Nonproliferation Regimes
START Entry Into Force
Presidential Decision Directive PDD/NSC-?
May 1993
Neither a text or a Whitehouse Factsheet for this poorly attested Directive are available, nor is the number known, although circumstantially it is almost certainly either PDD/NSC-6 or PDD/NSC-7. This extremely important Directive established US policy with respect to securing ratification and entry into force of the START agreements, as well as the accession of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear states, following the transfer of their Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia.
In Lisbon on May 23, 1992, the United States signed a protocol to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (those states on whose territory strategic nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union are located). The protocol made the four states party to the START Treaty and commits all signatories to reductions in strategic nuclear weapons within the 7-year period provided for in the treaty. Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan also agreed to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state.
Ukraine's parliament ratified the START Treaty and the Lisbon Protocol on February 3, 1994. On January 14, 1994, President Kravchuk signed the Trilateral Statement and Annex with President Clinton and President Yeltsin in Moscow, which provided for the transfer of all nuclear weapons in Ukraine to Russia for dismantlement. The statement specified prompt compensation by Russia to Ukraine for the highly enriched uranium in nuclear weapons transferred to Russia; previewed security assurances that the US, Russia, and the United Kingdom (NPT co-depositories) will provide Ukraine on its accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state; and reaffirmed the US commitment to assist the safe and secure dismantlement of nuclear forces.
The US pledged to provide millions of dollars under the Nunn-Lugar program to assist in the dismantlement of strategic offensive arms, defense conversion, nuclear-reactor safety and fissile material control, and accounting. The US also to assist in the establishment of a Science and Technology Center designed to provide peaceful employment opportunities to scientists and engineers formerly involved with weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.
SOURCES:
U.S. assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in dismantling their weapons of mass destruction -- Dr. Ashton B. Carter assistant secretary of defense for nuclear security and counterproliferation, House Foreign Affairs Committee, September 21, 1993