Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on October 13 in Moscow after bilateral arms reduction talks, the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday. The announcement came after the sixth round of Russian-U.S. talks in Geneva on a new deal to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1), which expires on December 5.
The ministry called the discussions "constructive", and said the sides agreed to continue work on modifying certain points of the treaty.
"Coordination of articles of the new draft agreement, as well as its technical points, were held by expert groups," the statement said, adding that the full results of the talks will be disclosed during the meeting in Moscow.
Clinton's trip to Russia will be part of her European tour, starting on October 9. She will also be travelling to Britain and Ireland.
The U.S. State Department earlier said that while in Moscow, she will "meet with senior Russian officials to discuss progress on a successor agreement to START, cooperation on nonproliferation and counterterrorism, and next steps for the Clinton-Lavrov commission."
Medvedev told the UN Security Council Summit on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament in late September that both countries were "ready to move further and cut the number of delivery vehicles for strategic offensive armaments by more than three times, and this issue is now being discussed at the negotiating table with our American partners."
He also said that a new Russian-U.S. strategic arms reduction treaty is likely be ready by December this year.
According to a report published by the U.S. State Department in April, as of January 1 Russia had 3,909 nuclear warheads and 814 delivery vehicles, including ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers. The same report said the United States had 5,576 warheads and 1,198 delivery vehicles.
