Nov. 11 () –
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Riabkov, has confirmed this Friday a meeting with the United States to negotiate a new agreement to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) at the end of November or the first week of December.
Riabkov has specified that the bilateral consultative commission will be held in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, where the XXVII Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) is currently being held, according to the news agency. state TASS.
“I am not going to deny that the topic of inspections will be the topic of discussion at the meeting, but this is not the only one and I would even say that it is not the main topic. Over the past time, we have accumulated a lot of topics that it is mandatory to consider. with the Americans,” he explained.
The START treaty was signed in 1991 by the then leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, George HW Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. In April 2010, the agreement was replaced by the New START treaty, signed by then-US and Russian leaders Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev, respectively.
The agreement, for now in force due to an extension signed in 2021, expires in 2026. The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has shown himself willing to negotiate a new arms control framework to replace the current pact with Moscow.
