Obama battles over nuke treaty

US: President Barack Obama will meet his Russian counterpart this weekend with his "reset" of ties with Moscow in peril, as he battles Republicans over a landmark nuclear treaty. Obama, just back from rough G20 meetings in Asia, was travelling to a delicate NATO summit in Portugal Thursday, leaving domestic foes, emboldened by a mid-term election triumph, apparently smelling blood over his foreign policy.

In just a few days, the mood over the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which makes deep cuts in superpower nuclear arsenals, has soured dramatically, prompting a sudden and high-powered White House counter-attack.

Obama warned Thursday that comments by a key Republican, Jon Kyl, that the treaty may not be ratified this year in a "lame duck" session of the old Senate, posed a grave risk to US national and nuclear security.

"It is a national security imperative that the United States ratify the new START treaty this year," Obama said, after calling in Republican Cold War negotiators Henry Kissinger, James Baker and other luminaries as back-up.

"This is not about politics, this is about national security," he added.

Kyl's comments appeared to have sparked deep alarm in the administration over national security, possible damage to improved Russia-US relations and fears that Obama's already eroded political capital could be further depleted.

In a hastily-plotted counter-attack, Obama dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her old stomping grounds where she is remembered as a persuasive ex-senator who once charmed Republicans.

On Thursday, Obama deployed a storied line-up of former secretaries of state and defense, alongside Kissinger and Baker, who his spokesman Robert Gibbs said were hardly "wild-eyed liberals."

The words Ronald Reagan meanwhile were never far from the lips of Obama spokesmen, as they deployed memories of a conservative hero to bolster what they say is a deal in an established tradition of arms control orthodoxy.

Obama will meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for the second time in as many weekends after the NATO summit in Portugal, which will take place with world leaders seeking to assess the impact of the American leader's domestic woes on his global leverage.

WASHINGTON, Friday, AFP