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Lawmaker: US should restore relations with Russia before proposing talks on nuclear arms

Barack Obama said in an article, "the United States and Russia - which together hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons - should negotiate to reduce our stockpiles further"

Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee Alexey Pushkov Anna Isakova/Russian State Duma Press Service/TASS

Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee Alexey Pushkov

© Anna Isakova/Russian State Duma Press Service/TASS

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Kremlin: Russia skips nuclear security summit over lack of cooperation with partners

MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. The United States should first restore its relations with Russia before proposing talks on nuclear weapons, chairman of Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee Alexey Pushkov said on Thursday.

"US should first restore the relations with Russia destroyed by [US President Barack] Obama and then propose talks on nuclear weapons to us," Pushkov wrote on his Twitter microblog, commenting on the US leader's Wednesday article in The Washington Post.

Obama said in the article that "the United States and Russia - which together hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons - should negotiate to reduce our stockpiles further." He added that "the security of the world demands that nations - including the United States - ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and conclude a new treaty to end the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons once and for all."

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