Obama to propose nuke arms cuts

US President Barack Obama will use his State of the Union address today to call for dramatic cuts in nuclear arsenals around the world, The New York Times reported late Sunday.
Quoting unnamed administration officials, the newspaper said that in recent months Obama had secured agreement with the US military that its nuclear force can be cut by roughly a third.
In his speech Obama is unlikely to discuss specific numbers but White House officials are looking at a cut that would take the arsenal of deployed weapons to just above 1,000.
The Unites States has about 1,700 nuclear weapons, and the new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia that passed the Senate at the end of 2009 calls for a limit of roughly 1,550 by 2018.
But Obama "believes that we can make pretty radical reductions -- and save a lot of money -- without compromising American security in the second term. And the Joint Chiefs have signed off on that concept," the Times quoted one official as saying.