Sweden And Poland Call For Tactical Arms Reduction

Sweden and Poland have called on the United States and Russia to reduce their tactical nuclear arms in Europe, saying such weapons pose a threat to the continent.   

Writing in the New York Times, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski singled out Russian warheads placed in the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea and the Kola Peninsula of northwestern Russia. 

Russia and the United States are negotiating new limits on strategic nuclear weapons, which are larger, more destructive weapons. 

The new pact would replace a 1991 treaty on strategic nuclear weapons, START.

Tactical nuclear weapons are smaller, but they are not covered by any arms control treaty. 

Bildt and Sikorski said the U.S. is believed to store about 200 warheads in Western Europe, and that Russia holds about 2,000 warheads, mostly in Western Russia.

"With some exceptions, tactical nuclear weapons were designed for outdated, large-scale war on the European continent," they said. 

compiled from agency reports