Moscow, October 25: Russia and the United States hope to have a legally binding document renewing a key agreement on limiting their nuclear arsenals by the beginning of December.
The two sides started talks in Geneva last week on the renewal of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires on December 5.
“Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama are counting on preparing a legally binding document on the START agreement by the beginning of December,” the Kremlin said in a statement after the presidents had a phone conversation.
The latest round of talks took place in Geneva earlier this week.
Washington and Moscow agreed earlier this year to draft a new nuclear deal to succeed START, marking the first tangible step in the thaw in US-Russian relations heralded by the advent of the Obama administration. START, signed in 1991 just before the break-up of the Soviet Union, bound both sides to deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals.
Negotiations have been dogged by bargaining over the deployment of the US missile defense shield in former Soviet bloc states in Eastern Europe, a project that has angered Russia.
START 1 obliged the two countries to reduce nuclear warheads to 6,000 and their delivery vehicles to 1,600 each. In 2002, a follow-up agreement on strategic offensive arms reduction was concluded in Moscow. The document, known as the Moscow Treaty, envisioned cuts of up to 1,700-2,200 warheads by December 2012.
—–Agencies