Russia is ready to significantly reduce its nuclear arms, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday ahead of scheduled talks on the topic with US President Barack Obama. "We are ready to reduce the number of our strategic defence arms several times compared to START 1," Medvedev told journalists in Amsterdam, referring to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Russia is re-negotiating with the US.
The number of warheads should be "lower than in the Moscow agreement" he said, referring to 2002 talks that had called for each side to limit their arsenal to a maximum of 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads by 2012. Medvedev was speaking through an interpreter after meeting Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende on the last of a two-day official visit.
The president said he was looking forward "very optimistically" to the July US-Russia summit, hopeful of a revival of ties that "in previous years corroded quite a bit". "We want new, binding agreements" on the START treaty, Medvedev said. "We want a verifiable and real reduction of such arms."
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