Moscow: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
will meet his US counterpart Barack Obama in New York on
September 23 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly
session and are likely to discuss the progress on a new arms
control treaty that will replace 1991 START-1 treaty.
The two leaders are to be briefed by their negotiators
on the progress in the talks on the new arms control treaty,
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.
At their July summit here Obama and Medvedev had
agreed to negotiate a new arms cut treaty by the end of this
year to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
(START-1), which expires on December 5.
Under the START-1 treaty inked in the last days of
the Soviet Union, Russia and the United States were to reduce
their nuclear warheads to 6,000 and their delivery vehicles to
1,600 each.
A follow-up pact signed in 2002 by President Vladimir
Putin and his US counterpart George W Bush provided for
further cuts to 1,700-2,200 warheads by December 2012.
However, Russia is linking the new arms control pact
with the US plans to deploy missile shield in Europe including
a radar in the Czech Republic and killer missiles in Poland,
as well as legally binding verification procedures, lacking in
the 2002 Treaty of Moscow (ToM).
Bureau Report
First Published: Tuesday, September 08, 2009, 19:49