U.S. plans more nuclear arms talks with Russia

U.S. plans more nuclear arms talks with Russia

Russia and the United States hope to meet for a second round of nuclear arms control talks in Vienna as soon as practicable, possibly in late July or early August, the U.S. envoy to those talks said on Tuesday.

Joe Davies reports.

The United States and Russia hope to meet for a second round of nuclear arms control talks as soon as is practical - possibly in late July or early August.

That's according to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea.

He was speaking in Vienna on Tuesday (June 23), a day after the first round of talks took place in the Austrian capital.

"We did indeed hold productive talks with Russia.

Indeed, the talks were so productive that we found enough common ground to warrant the establishment of several technical working groups to dive further into the details of what a future trilateral arms control agreement should look like." Both sides arrived on Monday (June 22) for the talks, which aim to replace the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty - known as New START - which expires in February.

New START caps the countries' deployed strategic nuclear weapons warheads at 1,550 each, far fewer than the thousands of atomic weapons they possess.

The U.S. wants to broaden its agreement with Russia to include all their atomic weapons.

China's nuclear arsenal is a fraction the size of that of the United States or Russia, and has repeatedly rejected U.S. attempts to involve them in the negotiations.

Billingslea denounced China for not getting involved.

"Beijing is clearly embarrassed.

And they should be.

They have an obligation to negotiate in good faith with us and the Russians and yesterday, they stood up not just the United States and Russia but they stood up the entire world.

It's regrettable.

They should have been here for these talks." The U.S. envoy added that the United States would continue to invite China to the talks.