NEW YORK, November 11. /TASS/. Russian and US representatives may hold a meeting in Cairo in the near future to discuss the possibility of resuming inspection activities under the Treaty on the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), Foreign Policy magazine said on Friday, citing unnamed current and former US officials.
According to Foreign Policy sources, resumption of contacts over New START has been an unspoken goal of the White House and the Department of State at least since last summer. Efforts to make arrangements for a meeting on this issue have been going on for several months, the magazine writes. The meeting is expected to take place in Cairo within the framework of the Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC). The resumption of inspections will be one of the main items on the agenda, according to the magazine.
"It’s not like we’ve been blind to what’s going on inside the Russian nuclear forces, but getting back to on-site inspections is an important aspect of treaty verification," NATO’s former Deputy Secretary-General Rose Gottemoeller told Foreign Policy.
According to the magazine, the United States monitors Russia’s nuclear facilities using satellites, while Russia continues to notify Washington of the movements of its nuclear forces in accordance with the treaty. Possible contacts will be the first step for both sides to resume nuclear arms control, the magazine says.
New START situation
On Thursday, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov avoided discussing the possibility of negotiations between Moscow and Washington on the resumption of inspections at nuclear weapons deployment sites under the New START treaty. He stressed that such contacts could not be announced in advance.
Earlier, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins said that officials from Russia and the United States were in the process of coordinating a meeting to discuss the possibility of resuming inspection activities under the Treaty. As Russia’s ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov explained in an interview with TASS, the various restrictive measures Washington and its allies have taken against Moscow created conditions in which Russia's inspections in the United States under the New START were in fact blocked.
The US and Russia signed New START in 2010. According to its terms, either party shall reduce its strategic offensive weapons in such a way that seven years after the treaty’s entry into force and thereafter their total numbers will not exceed 700 operational intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers, 1,550 warheads on them, and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers of ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers. The agreement, concluded for a period of 10 years, expired on February 5, 2021, however, it envisages the possibility of extension by mutual consent. In February 2021, Moscow and Washington prolonged the agreement for the maximum period of five years.