Lesser Known Nuclear Pact With Russia Wins Clearance - NYTimes.com: "While President Obama presses the Senate to embrace a new arms control treaty with Russia, another nuclear pact with Moscow cleared its final hurdle on Thursday after more than four years with virtually no notice but potentially significant impact.
An agreement opening the door to greater civilian nuclear cooperation between the two countries cleared its final hurdle in Congress and will now take force in what Mr. Obama hopes will be another step toward strengthening the Russian-American rapprochement that has been one of his signature foreign policy goals.
The civilian nuclear agreement lifts longstanding limitations to allow extensive commercial nuclear trade, technology transfers and joint research between Russia and the United States. It does not permit the transfer of restricted data, but it eliminates a significant barrier to Russia’s importing, storing and possibly reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from American-supplied reactors around the world.
The agreement was a top priority of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, who sealed a deal with the Kremlin in May 2008. But he withdrew it from Congress four months later in protest of Russia’s war with its tiny neighbor, Georgia. Mr. Obama resubmitted it last May, saying that Georgia “need no longer be considered an obstacle” and citing recent Russian cooperation in trying to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon."
