Chapter 3 - INF Treaty Process

Soviet SS-12 launchers went by rail from Bischofswerda, East Germany to the Soviet elimination facilities at Stan'kovo. The treaty required prior notification before the movement of any missiles, launchers, or support equipment.

Another collateral constraint specified that during the first three treaty years each party would carry out certain "cooperative" measures to enhance the use of national technical means of verification. Specifically, these measures required the inspected party (in this case the Soviet Union) that possessed road-mobile, ground-launched, ballistic missiles with a range greater than 5,500 kilometers (and thus not limited by the INF Treaty) to open, within six hours of receiving a request, the roofs of all fixed structures, and to remove from those structures the missiles and launchers. The missiles and launchers had to be displayed in the open without concealment and the shelter roofs had to be left open and the missiles and launchers in place for up to 6 hours. Each party had the right to make up to six requests for these cooperative measures each year.²⁷

Essentially, national technical means of verification were used in the INF Treaty process to monitor all facets of activity associated with treaty compliance. By contrast, INF Treaty on-site inspections were limited to monitoring activity within a prescribed area during a specific period of time. Both, however, were part and parcel of the monitoring function of the INF Treaty. The information that they gathered was one part of the verification regime. Analysis, evaluation, and, finally, judgment on treaty compliance and verification by national political leaders constituted the other parts.

Special Verification Commission
When the INF Treaty entered into force on June 1, 1988, so too did the Special Verification Commission (SVC). Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, the commission held its first session from June 6, 1988, to July 15, 1988. Its charter was to resolve questions relating to treaty compliance and to agree upon measures necessary to improve the viability and effectiveness of the INF Treaty.²⁸Essentially, this charter meant that the Soviet and American commission members would address questions relating to treaty compliance and develop joint statements, usually referred to as memoranda of agreements, on the procedures necessary for carrying out the provisions relating to inspections under the treaty. In the first SVC session, the commissioners agreed to apply "provisionally" those INF inspection and escort procedures relating to equipment and methods that had been developed before the treaty's entry into force on June 1, 1988. In the spring of 1988, U.S. and Soviet delegations had met in Moscow, Washington, and Vienna in a series of INF Treaty Technical Talks. One product of those technical talks was a set of on-site inspection procedures that the two parties agreed would apply "provisionally" until a joint U.S.-USSR memorandum of agreement on the inspection/escort provisions could be fully developed and signed by the Special Verification Commission.²⁹ The commission's procedures and processes were not specifically defined in treaty language. Consequently, one of the first items of business, concurrent with the development of inspection procedures, was to negotiate a memorandum of understanding for the commission itself. While these deliberations were under way in the summer and fall of 1988, Soviet and American on-site inspectors were carrying out more than 200 baseline, continuous portal monitoring, elimination, and closeout inspections. Seven months after the INF Treaty went into effect, on December 20, 1988, the U.S. representative to the SVC, Ambassador Steven E. Steiner, and the Soviet representative, Ambassador Mikhail N. Strel'tsov, signed the SVC Memorandum of Understanding.³⁰		The U.S. notified the Soviet government thirty days in advance of the movement of this GLCM launcher. On April 11, 1990, the launcher was loaded onto an Air Force C-5A transport aircraft. The flight went from Hahn Air Base, West Germany to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.

This memorandum reiterated the commission's two principal purposes as spelled out in the treaty: to resolve compliance issues and to agree upon measures for improving the effectiveness of the treaty. SVC commission membership would consist of a national representative, a deputy representative, and other advisors and experts "as necessary." Communications regarding meeting dates, agenda, and documents would be conveyed through the two Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers. SVC meetings would be held in Geneva, Switzerland, unless both parties agreed to meet elsewhere.

Once an SVC meeting had been convened, the operating rules were relatively straightforward. The senior representatives of the two nations would preside over the meeting on an alternating basis. The commission could, if appropriate, divide itself into operational working groups consisting of advisors and experts for addressing particular questions. The work of the commission was to be conducted in a confidential manner. However, documents that recorded the results of the commission would not be confidential, unless agreed to by both parties. In the brief history of the INF Treaty, the Special Verification Commission's most significant document was the Memorandum of Agreement Regarding the Implementation of the Verification Provisions of the INF Treaty.

Signed by U.S. Representative Steiner and Soviet Representative Strel'tsov on December 21, 1989, this memorandum and its six annexes contained detailed agreements between the two parties on inspection notifications; inspection equipment; logistics relating to housing, feeding, and transporting of inspectors and equipment; and a variety of other measures.³¹Procedures for conducting the continuous portal monitoring on-site inspections at Votkinsk and Magna were reviewed, refined, and codified in this new memorandum of agreement. When this SVC document was signed and published, it became one of the INF Treaty basic documents.

These documents included: the INF Treaty; the Memorandum of Understanding Establishing a Data Base; the Protocol on Eliminations; and the Protocol on Inspections. The Memorandum of Agreement Regarding the Implementation of Verification Provisions of the INF Treaty was signed on December 21, 1989. Subsequently, this MOA has been amended to incorporate additional implementation agreements.