United States(US) and Russia will begin the second round of nuclear disarmament talks in Vienna on Monday.
The two-day talks will be held between US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, reports Xinhua news agency.
Billingslea tweeted, “Negotiations about to start. The US is prepared for a serious dialogue.”
Negotiations about to start. The U.S. is prepared for a serious dialogue. pic.twitter.com/SEA1zbw1FZ
— Ambassador Marshall S. Billingslea (@USArmsControl) August 17, 2020
Earlier on August 14 he had tweeted, “Heading to Austria for arms control talks, adding that the US was sending “one of the highest level delegations ever”.
Heading to Austria for #armscontrol https://t.co/8gUQri8oi9 sending 1 of the highest level delegations ever, including many senior generals, admirals & @DeptofDefense @ENERGY officials. Shows how seriously we are taking this.Expect Russia to do same & will gauge their seriousness
— Ambassador Marshall S. Billingslea (@USArmsControl) August 14, 2020
The negotiations convene experts from both sides who had dealt with military doctrines, potential threats and questions of verification at the end of July.
Meanwhile, the first round of disarmament talks, which were also held in Vienna, ended with no tangible results in late June, as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty will expire in several months.
The development comes after Russian Ambassador to UN, Gennady Gatilov, said on August 7 that Moscow was open for dialogue with the US to
On August 2, Washington withdrew from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and declared that the US-Russian bilateral nuclear disarmament era had ended.
The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the former Soviet Union and the US on the elimination of ground-based intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.
Earlier, Russia had in June, called on the United States to make a “positiveJune” proposal as the powers open talks on the first round of major disarmament treaty, warning that US insistence on including China could scuttle efforts.
But the Trump administration had said that a successor to New START, a Cold War legacy negotiated under Barack Obama, should bring in China — whose nuclear arsenal is growing but remains significantly smaller than those of Russia and the United States.
President Donald Trump had walked out on a number of international agreements but voiced a general interest in preserving New START, which obliged the United States and Russia to halve their inventories of strategic nuclear missile launchers.
Trump has sought a warmer relationship with President Vladimir Putin but professes an “America first” approach to foreign affairs.
Trump in May had pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed Russia, the United States and 32 other nations to conduct surveillance flights over one another’s territory at short notice — an arrangement that reportedly piqued Trump when a Russian spy plane flew over his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club.
He earlier pulled out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a key agreement from the Cold War.
Trump has also rejected a multinational denuclearization agreement with Iran and pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate accord.