Encouraged by the pace of talks, US and Russian arms negotiators will meet in Moscow on April 23 and 24 to work on the strategic arms agreement that Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin hope to sign at their summit in May, the US negotiator said on Friday.
Under Secretary of State John Bolton told a briefing that he would follow up on talks between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who are meeting in Madrid in the second week of April.
Bolton leads the US side in talks on arms control with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov. They reported some progress after negotiations in Geneva last week.
The two sides have agreed to reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to about the same level -- between 1,700 and 2,200 in the case of the United States -- but they have not agreed on a counting method or on what an agreement should say about the warheads they intend to put into storage.
After the Bolton-Mamedov meeting in Moscow, Powell and Ivanov are expected to meet again in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik in May during a NATO ministerial meeting.
"I don't expect them to conclude an agreement in Madrid, but we're certainly hoping that that will further the progress we've made and make it possible to reach a final agreement between the two presidents in Moscow," Bolton said. "I think the pace of our discussions is encouraging," he added.
(China Daily March 30, 2002)
