WASHINGTON — While President Barack Obama presses the Senate to embrace a new arms-control treaty with Russia, another nuclear pact with Moscow secured final approval after more than four years on Thursday 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 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 reverses decades of bipartisan policy and allows 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 would clear the way for Russia to import, store and possibly reprocess spent nuclear fuel from American-supplied reactors around the world, a multibillion-dollar business.
The civilian nuclear agreement did not require legislative approval, but Congress had 90 legislative days — until Thursday — to reject it.
Denver Post wire services
