GENEVA, May 31 Russian and US negotiators are due to meet in Geneva on Monday for a second round of talks on renewing a key Cold War-era arms reduction deal, a month before their leaders hold a landmark summit.
Diplomats said the three-day meeting on the Start treaty would be held behind closed doors at an undisclosed location, mirroring the discretion surrounding the first round in Moscow nearly two weeks ago.
“On the details of the negotiation, I think we prefer to keep that in private right now. I think that's just the best way to conduct these kinds of negotiations,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.
First results from the talks are expected to be unveiled by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev during their summit meeting in Moscow on July 6 to 8, a Russian diplomat said.
Despite a thaw in US-Russian relations following the departure of the Bush administration, analysts were expecting little concrete progress on the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires on December 5.
On top of the complex technical issues surrounding the landmark treaty -- which took a decade to reach agreement on the deep cuts in US and Soviet nuclear arsenals after the fall of the Iron Curtain -- the negotiations are also hampered by differing ambitions.
“The sides are not in the same position. Obama needs a result to demonstrate that the 'reset' of US-Russian relations is getting somewhere,” said Evgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation.
Earlier this year, Vice President Joseph Biden unveiled the Obama administration's fresh approach to fractious US relations with the old Cold War foe, saying it wanted to press the 'reset' button.
Disarmament expert Jozef Goldblat said the Start talks allowed the United States to create a climate “propitious for help with other more complicated subjects” where Washington needs Moscow's support, such as Iran and North Korea's controversial nuclear programmes.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has not concealed Moscow's desire to broaden the talks to take account of the planned US anti-missile shield in Europe.
The United States has insisted that the defensive shield is meant to counter an Iranian threat.
But Russia regards the shield, which would partly be based in former eastern bloc countries close to its borders, as a threat to its own security.
“The number one stumbling block is the anti missile shield,” said Volk.
“Moscow wants Washington to give up deployment but the Americans are against that.” Russian military analyst Alexander Goltz said the negotiations also helped Moscow recover some of its prestige.
“The Russians are aiming to make the process last as long as possible, because the talks restore their status as a world power,” he explained.
Russian officials hailed the “constructive and business-like” atmosphere of the first round, but Untied States delegation chief Rose Gottemoeller warned before the talks even began that the process could be more drawn out than expected.
Goltz played down expectations for the Obama-Medvedev summit because the two sides were too far apart.
But veteran disarmament observer Goldblat suggested an elegant way out a five year extension of Start that would give time for negotiations on a “broader” disarmament deal between the world's biggest nuclear powers.—AFP