United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will depart Washington for Moscow Wednesday on a two-day visit during which she would attend a Quartet meeting of the Middle East Peace process and also meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the State Department said Monday.
Clinton and U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, along with Lavrov, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and European Union High representative Catherine Ashton, as well as the Quartet Representative Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, would discuss efforts to promote Middle East peace, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P J Crowley said in a statement.
During her meeting with senior Russian officials, Clinton will discuss progress on a successor agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), cooperation on non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, security issues and the work of the Bilateral Presidential Commission.
On the eve of her visit, Clinton said she expected a new US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty to be inked soon.
"I'm optimistic that we'll be able to complete this agreement soon," Clinton said in an interview with Russian magazine "The New Times" published on Monday.
Admitting that the treaty is technically very complex to accomplish, she said both nations share an interest in making real reductions in their strategic arsenals.
Clinton said the key challenge was to reduce nuclear arms in a way that is verifiable but less costly and operationally complex than the 1991 START-1 treaty.
Warning of a growing risk of nuclear attacks despite the reduced threat of a global nuclear war, Clinton said: "By taking concrete steps such as the new START treaty, we can reduce our own stockpiles and encourage others to do the same."
Ever since Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met his American counterpart Barack Obama in April last year, the two nations have been working on a new arms control deal, but failed to reach a pact before the START-1 treaty expired in December.
The U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile defense system in East Europe against missile attack by "rogue nations," such as Iran and North Korea, have been a major irritant in the nuclear disarmament negotiations.
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