Between 12 and 15 January 1994, President Bill Clinton of the United States and President Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation negotiated the Kremlin accords.[1] These accords were an agreement between their respective countries not to target strategic nuclear missiles at each other.
The text of the agreement,[2] which is thirteen paragraphs long, includes a single paragraph on the subject of detargeting. It specifies 30 May 1994 as the deadline for detargeting, and states that "for the first time in nearly half a century – virtually since the dawn of the nuclear age – Russia and United States will not operate nuclear forces, day-to-day, in a manner that presumes they are adversaries."
Detargeted missiles are reprogrammed to either have no target or, in the case of missiles that require a constant target (such as the Minuteman III), are set to open-ocean targets.[3]
In 1997, during a debate over an amendment that would require the president to certify that Russia had detargeted its missiles, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) introduced into the Congressional Record a transcript of a 60 Minutes interview with Russian generals which stated that Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles could be retargeted to point to US targets within a matter of minutes. Weldon also pointed out that there is no way to verify that Russia has detargeted its missiles.[4]