Highlights of the Deal
A government statement said U.S. Vice President Al Gore signed the agreement in Washington on Friday and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed it in Moscow on Aug. 29.
The deal was agreed between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Bill Clinton during their summit in Moscow in June.
The West has doubted the ability of post-Soviet Russia to properly control depots where weapons-grade plutonium is stored and has expressed fears that it could get into the wrong hands.
"The agreement stipulates that the activities of Russia and the United States connected with the destruction of weapons-grade plutonium will be open for the international community and will be under control of the International Nuclear Energy Agency," the government statement said.
The plutonium pact obliges each country to render the weapons-grade plutonium into a form unusable for nuclear weapons and to pledge never to use it for that purpose again.
According to U.S. officials, the 34 tons to be destroyed by each country represents about one quarter of Russia?€™s military plutonium stockpile and about one third of that of the United States. The program will cost $5.7 billion to implement and take about 20 years to complete, officials said. The Russian program is estimated to cost more than $1.7 billion and the U.S. program $4 billion.
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