General

The START II Treaty was specifically linked to the START I Treaty by its negotiators. Under START II, all START I provisions will pertain, except those specifically modified in START II. Moreover, some START II provisions are described as changes to specifically cited START I Treaty Articles. In addition, START II remains in force only as long as START I. However, while START II builds on START I, both Treaties (once START II enters into force) will operate simultaneously. To facilitate understanding and analysis by government and non-government users, this site links the texts of these two treaties and their associated documents together by means of a series of the hypertext links.

However the user can enter individual documents for each Treaty (e.g. START I Treaty Text, START I Definitions Annex, START II Memorandum of Attribution), which also have been "hyperlinked," by means of a main menu for each Treaty. To further assist the user's orientation when navigating between links in both Treaties, the background of all START I document pages is white, while the background of all START II document pages is yellow.

Types of Links

Functionally this site contains basically three types of hyperlinks. First, each Article or Section number, and each number or letter of each paragraph and subparagraph of Treaty texts and most protocols and annexes is a hypertext link to the corresponding Article-by-Article Analysis (AAA) text prepared for each Treaty by the US Government for ratification hearings before the US Senate. For unique documents such as the Definitions Annex and the Agreed Statements Annex bold hypertext of the key terms or titles provides the link to the corresponding AAA text. In still other documents, the hypertext link to the AAA has been established by the inserted bracketed hypertext expression [ABA].

Second, hypertext words and phrases are linked to other locations in the same or other START documents. Such links may take the user to a specifically cited Article/Section or paragraph of a specifically cited document. However, such links may also take the user to a further explanation or a definition of the hypertext term or phrase (e.g., to a definition in the Definitions Annex). Third, a number of links associated with the text of certain Articles, Section, paragraphs, etc. have been inserted as bracketed reference hypertext (e.g., [Agreed State 28], [RF MOU Annex A]). This type of hypertext link both alerts the user to the fact of other associated Treaty provisions and information, and establishes an immediate and direct link to such provisions and information. Many of the hypertext links of this latter type take the user to the START I Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and the START II Memorandum of Attribution.

Memorandum of Understanding

The START I Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which includes the detailed information exchanged by the Parties on the numbers, locations, and characteristics (including photos) of those items subject to provisions of these Treaties can be accessed either by MOU document designation (i.e., section number or annex letter designation) or by Treaty Party (e.g., US, RF, Belarus, Kazakhstan, or Ukraine).

This hyperlinked version of the START I and START II Treaties includes the version of the START I MOU data exchanged by the Parties on 1 July 1998. This version reflects corrections to the original data provided by the US and the USSR, the fact that each of the four successor states of the former USSR now provides its own MOU data updates, and the significant portion of the reductions mandated by that Treaty already accomplished by the Parties. Users who require earlier or subsequent detailed MOU data exchanged by the Parties can request that data electronically under the MOU entry of the non-hyperlinked version of the START I Treaty at this same Department of State/Bureau of Arms Control site. The latest aggregate START I MOU data provided by the Parties can also be found under the START I entry for arms control fact sheets.