French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would cut France's nuclear arsenal to fewer than 300 warheads, seeking to balance defense of the nation -- he mentioned the threat from Iran -- against budgetary and changed strategic considerations.
In his first major speech as president on the French deterrent, Sarkozy also urged the US and China to fully commit to a treaty banning tests of nuclear weapons.
In addition, Sarkozy shifted somewhat from the nuclear doctrine of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, by being slightly more ambiguous about the circumstances that might lead France to employ its nuclear weapons.
Sarkozy's decision to reveal the rough size of France's arsenal -- the Defense Ministry said the exact number of warheads is still secret -- appeared aimed at prodding other nuclear powers to be equally transparent.
AIRBORNE
Many of France's nuclear weapons are carried aboard submarines, with the rest on warplanes. Sarkozy said the airborne component would be cut by one-third, specifying that that included nuclear weapons, missiles and planes.
"After this reduction, our arsenal will include less than 300 nuclear warheads," he said on Friday. "That is half the maximum number of warheads that we had during the Cold War."
He also said that none of France's weapons is targeted at any nation.
SQUADRONS
France's airborne nukes are carried by three Air Force squadrons of Mirage 2000N and another Navy flotilla of upgraded Super Etendard jets.
They are all to be replaced by high-tech Rafale jets, in Air Force and Navy versions.
French defense expert Francois Heisbourg said the air fleet modernization allowed the size of the nuclear arsenal to be trimmed.
"When you have better planes taking over for older planes, you can afford to reduce the numbers," said Heisbourg, special adviser to the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research think-tank.
"That doesn't make us virtuous guys in itself, although of course it's nicer to say the numbers are going down than the numbers are going up. What does make us more virtuous than we were before is by saying `By the way, that means we're going to have 300.' And that meaning is, `Oh by the way, dear Chinese friends, you better tell us how many you've got.'"
The Federation of American Scientists, which tracks nuclear arsenals around the globe, said in a status report for this year that France had 348 strategic nuclear weapons. It lists 193 for sites and for negotiations on treaties to ban short and intermediate-range ground-to-ground missiles and to ban the manufacturing of fissile material for nuclear weapons. He also pressured to China and the US to ratify a nuclear test ban treaty they signed in 1996. France ratified it a decade ago.
RATIFICATION
Heisbourg said ratification by China and the US would "put pressure on countries that have been building things that look like test sites, like the North Koreans or, indeed, the Iranians."
He also said a global treaty banning intermediate-range missiles could put severe pressure on India, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS