US Russia to resume arms control talks

US: The United States and Russia are to resume talks on a successor treaty for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) next Monday in Geneva, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

Department spokesman P. J. Crowley made the announcement at a news briefing, saying that the talks “hopefully will arrive at a quality agreement that meets the needs and interests of both sides.”

The resumption of talks came after a trip to Moscow last week by U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones and Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. An interagency delegation that included Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher and Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller also went to Moscow with them.

Tauscher is in charge of arms control and international security affairs in the State Department, while Gottemoeller is the head of the U.S. team in the START negotiations. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that “95 percent” of the new treaty was agreed upon by Russia and the United States.

The Russian side earlier confirmed the negotiations will resume in February.

The United States and Russia have been working on a successor to the START that expired on Dec. 5, 2009.

The START, signed in 1991 between the former Soviet Union and the United States, obliged both sides to reduce the number of their nuclear warheads to 6,000 and delivery vehicles to 1,600.

Medvedev and Obama agreed last July to slash each country’s nuclear warheads to 1,500 and 1,675 and delivery vehicles to 500 and 1,000 respectively under a new START treaty. Disagreements remain on verification and control arrangements to be included in the document.

Washington, Wednesday, Xinhua