By Desmond Butler,
The Canadian Press,
20 January 2010

U.S., Russian negotiators resuming talks on treaty limiting arsenals

WASHINGTON - A senior U.S. arms control official said Wednesday that U.S. negotiators are on their way to Moscow to resume talks with Russia on a successor to a major Cold War treaty limiting nuclear arsenals.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher told reporters that talks would intensify when both sides meet in Geneva Jan. 25.

Washington and Moscow had hoped to reach an agreement for a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the end of last year. But negotiators broke off for vacations after talks snagged on how to monitor the arsenals.

The Obama administration has sought to make the negotiations a vehicle for demonstrating improved relations with Russia. The administration hopes that greater co-operation on arms control can lead to Russian help on stickier issues including efforts to rein in Iran`s suspected nuclear ambitions.

"I think we are really close," Tauscher said of chances to conclude a deal soon.

The 1991 treaty expired last month. It required each country to cut its nuclear warheads by at least one-fourth, to about 6,000, and to implement procedures for verifying that each side was sticking to the agreement.

Obama and Medvedev agreed at a Moscow summit in July to cut the number of nuclear warheads that each possesses to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years as part of a broad new treaty.

Tauscher said that the United States would resist Russian calls to including monitoring of U.S. missile defence interceptors as part of any deal.

The United States has been seeking to guarantee access to data on missile tests as part of any deal, but Russia has resisted that because it is more active in developing new missiles. Russia has expressed interest in similar data on U.S. interceptors, but U.S. negotiators have sought to exclude missile defence from the current negotiations.