US and Russia to hold new round of arms reduction talks

Jun 22, 2009, 14:37 GMT

Geneva - Russian and US officials will hold talks in Geneva later this week on replacing a nuclear arms reduction treaty that is set to expire at the end of the year, officials said Monday.

The talks will take place in Geneva, where the two sides held a previous round of negotiations earlier this month.

Rose Gottemoeller, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, is expected to lead the US delegation while the Russian team would be headed by Anatoly Antonov, the director of the department on disarmament at the foreign ministry.

Experts from defense, space and atomic divisions of ministries attended the previous round of talks.

The delegations are looking to find a successor to the cold war- era Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START), which expires in December.

The previous Geneva round followed the first session held last month in Moscow.

Speaking earlier this month to the Conference on Disarmament, hosted at the United Nations Office at Geneva, Gottemoeller said the talks were 'productive.'

Few details are expected to be released on progress in the negotiations until US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev meet in Moscow on July 6.

The new American administration has been pushing to 'reset' its relations with Moscow.

Russian officials have said they want the disarmament talks to extend beyond nuclear weapons.

The negotiations should include, they said, a deal for the US to scrap the controversial missile defence shield plans for eastern Europe that the previous administration laid out, and which Moscow opposes.