Obama, Medvedev to sign declaration on treatyMOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States and Russia will commit to new talks on reducing their nuclear arsenals when Barack Obama meets President Dmitry Medvedev for the first time next month, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
The two leaders will also sign a document on U.S.-Russian relations in general at a meeting in London, and seek to coordinate policies on Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to President Dmitry Medvedev, told reporters.
"We will seek to agree on the terms and timeframe for working on an agreement to replace the START treaty so that at our next meeting we can reach our first concrete agreements and conclude all of our work by year's end," Prikhodko said.
Russian officials have said that finding agreement on a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1), which is due to expire in December 2009, is a priority in relations with the new U.S. administration.
The START Treaty, signed in July 1991 by U.S. President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, led to the largest bilateral reductions of nuclear weapons in history.
It was the result of nearly a decade of talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War. At the time of agreement, the United States had developed more sophisticated ways to deliver warheads, but the Soviet Union had a larger arsenal of weapons.
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