RUSSIA’S foreign minister late on Wednesday echoed US officials’ optimism that negotiations here this week would settle differences on deep nuclear arms reductions before a US-Russian summit in Moscow later this month.
”I believe that it’s quite possible” differences will be cleared up by the presidential summit, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters outside the Russian Embassy here shortly after arriving here from Russia.
US President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are due to meet May 23-25 in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Ivanov said he would meet with US officials on Thursday to ”focus on the preparation for the forthcoming visit of President Bush to Russia,” including two key agreements the two leaders hope to sign.
Bush and Putin have both agreed to slash their nuclear arsenals from 6 000 warheads to between 1 700 and 2 200, over the next 10 years.
The main stumbling block has been Washington’s plan to store rather than destroy the decommissioned warheads, an option that Moscow strongly opposes.
Russia, which has been pressing for a legally binding agreement that would make the cuts irreversible, last week presented a new set of proposals aimed at breaking the deadlock but details have not been disclosed.
”The goal has been set and our task is to carry it out,” said Ivanov, who will meet Friday with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
A second document to be signed by Bush and Putin would be a declaration on a framework for a new strategic partnership between the two countries, he said.
Ivanov said he would also be involved in talks on Thursday as part of the Middle East ”quartet,” which groups the United States, European Union, the United Nations and Russia, to focus on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians. – Sapa-AFP