U.S.-Russian arms control talks resume

GENEVA, Switzerland, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Talks between U.S. and Russian diplomats over a new arms control treaty resumed Monday in Switzerland.

The meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva is intended to help broker a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which expired in late 2009. Previous negotiations in Geneva in December ended without results.

It's the first time in four decades that the United States and Russia do not have an arms treaty in operation.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev indicated last week that the new treaty was nearly agreed upon and could be finalized within a few weeks.

U.S. national security adviser Gen. James Jones and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Russian defense officials led by Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, last week in Moscow for two days of closed-door talks.

RIA Novosti reports that they discussed the exchange of telemetric data on strategic missiles so they can be identified when launched.

The negotiations come half a year after Obama and Medvedev signed an agreement pledging a reduction of nuclear warheads from 2,200 to a range of between 1,500 and 1,675, and of carrier missiles from 1,600 to a range of between 500 and 1,100.

The agreement at the time was hailed as a major step forward for U.S.-Russian relations, which had suffered over the past years with differences ranging from human rights, the independence of the former Serbian province of Kosovo, NATO's eastward expansion, a U.S.-planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe and the 2008 Russian-Georgian war.

Obama has promised to shake up U.S. foreign policy by trying to improve ties with the Kremlin in a bid to get increased support from Russia in Afghanistan and in the conflict over Iran's controversial nuclear program.

In an obvious bid to please Moscow, Washington last year abandoned plans for a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had pushed for the system to defend against possible Iranian nuclear missiles.

A successor to START would be a first measurable success for Obama's conciliatory Russia policy, criticized at home by Republicans and human-rights groups, who feel Washington is being silent regarding human-rights abuses by the former Cold War enemy.