Britain's nuclear arms may be negotiable

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Britain's nuclear missiles might be negotiable "at some point" as part of U.S. President Barack Obama's drive for a world free of atomic weapons, Defence Secretary John Hutton said on Saturday.

The parliament gave the go-ahead in 2007 to government plans to replace the Trident submarine-based nuclear weapons system, due to go out of service in the 2020s, with a new system at a cost of up to 20 billion pounds.

But the financial crisis and recession, which has forced Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government to borrow on a huge scale, has reopened debate about whether Britain can afford the new weapon system.

A renewed drive for nuclear arms reductions since Obama took office has also raised speculation that the British arsenal could become a bargaining chip.

Hutton welcomed an agreement between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week to seek a deal to cut the nuclear arsenals their countries built up during the Cold War.

Obama said on Friday he would set out an agenda in talks with European Union leaders in Prague on Sunday "to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."

Asked if the Trident system was negotiable, Hutton told BBC radio: "That might be a possibility at some point in the future, but we are certainly not at that point today."

For the British weapon system to become negotiable, "there would have to be a very significant breakthrough in international nuclear weapons negotiations," Hutton said.

Hutton said Britain could afford the new submarine-based weapons system but added: "We've got a choice to make, of course, all governments do."