'Bombs away' but not too fast: 9 nuke states slow in curbing 16,300 warheads.
Nuclear-armed countries are upping the ante by modernizing their delivery systems and warheads, Swedish researchers have found. The report dampens hopes of modest stockpile reductions.
Amid a steady decline in the number of nuclear warheads in the world over the past five years, the nine nuclear-armed states still possess a total of 16,300 such weapons of mass destruction in early 2014 - down by around 5.6 percent from the previous year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealed in its annual report on Monday.
"Once again this year, the nuclear weapon-possessing states took little action to indicate a genuine willingness to work toward complete dismantlement of their nuclear arsenals," wrote SIPRI researchers Shannon Kile and Phillip Patton Schell.
A large part of the reductions came from Cold War-era foes United States and Russia, which together possess around 93 percent of the world's nuclear weapons.
However, Washingtons insistence on building a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe just miles from the Russian border, and without Russias involvement threatens to terminate the 2011 New Start treaty, which limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550.
http://rt.com/news/166132-nuclear-weapons-report-obama/
Full report here : Nuclear forces reduced while modernizations continue, says SIPRI http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/2014/nuclear_May_2014