Washington DC:
The US Senate ratified an arms control treaty with Russia on Wednesday that reduces the limit for each country's stockpile of nuclear warheads, giving President Barack Obama a major foreign policy win in the last days of this session of Congress.
At his year-end news conference, Obama praised the strong bipartisan vote for a treaty he described as the most significant arms control pact in nearly two decades.
In addition to cutting nuclear weapons and launchers, Obama said the pact will allow US inspectors to "be back on the ground" in Russia.
He said the US relationship with Russia was "essential to making progress on a whole host of challenges, from enforcing strong sanctions on Iran, to preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists."
The Obama administration has made arms control negotiations the centrepiece of "resetting" its relationship with Russia.
The Senate's ratification of the treaty was Obama's top foreign policy priority of the postelection session of Congress, and a victory the administration ground out over the past few weeks by securing the votes of Republicans.
Thirteen Republicans broke with their top two leaders and joined 56 Democrats and two independents in providing the necessary two-thirds vote to approve the treaty. The vote was 71-26.
The top two Republican senators voted against the pact, although it was not clear how hard they worked to prevent its ratification.
Earlier in the day, during final statements before the vote, Senator John Kyl continued to express reservations regarding the treaty.
"Maybe we can get back to focusing on the real issues, issues of proliferation, of terrorism, dealing with threats from countries like North Korea and Iran," Kyl said.
Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, reminded his colleagues that this was an opportunity to shape the future of nuclear disarmament.
Vice President Joe Biden presided over the Senate and announced the vote.
The accord, which still must be approved by Russia, would restart onsite weapons inspections as successors to President Ronald Reagan have embraced his edict of "trust, but verify."
Calling the treaty a national security imperative, Obama had pressed for its approval before a new, more Republican Congress assumes power in January.
In recent days, he had telephoned a handful of wavering Republicans, eventually locking in their votes.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow welcomed the vote but still needed to study the accompanying Senate resolution.
The Obama administration has argued that the United States must show credibility in its improved relations with its former Cold War foe, and the treaty was critical to any rapprochement.
The New START(Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) treaty, signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April, would limit each country's strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 down from the current ceiling of 2,200.
It also would establish a system for monitoring and verification.US weapons inspections ended last year with the expiration of a 1991 treaty.