Diplomats from the United States and Russia wrapped up a 10-day meeting about the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in Switzerland on Friday, but did not announce any imminent plan to sign a successor arms-control agreement.
That is according to a Thursday press release from the State Department on the 15th session of the Bilateral Consultative Commission. “The U.S. and Russian delegations continued the discussion of practical issues related to the implementation of the Treaty,” the State Department said.
New START, which limits the U.S. and Russia to deploying no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on 700 long-range delivery vehicles, is set to expire in less than three years. Russia has said it wants eventually to negotiate a follow-on treaty, but U.S. officials — pointing to Moscow’s alleged violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty — have said the time is not ripe.
New START, signed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2010, is a successor to the START treaty signed by then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush and then-Soviet-President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
The U.S. and Russia have already met their New START nuclear reduction obligations. The treaty remains in force until Feb. 5, 2021.
