The United States and Russia will soon hold talks on resuming suspended nuclear arms control inspections that had been put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic and languished after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the State Department said Tuesday.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said negotiations on the inspections would take place “in the near future” under the terms of the New START treaty and would not include any discussion of the conflict in Ukraine.
He would not give a date or a venue for the talks but other officials suggested they would be held before the end of the year, likely in Egypt.
The meeting of the treaty’s so-called “Bilateral Consultative Commission” will be the first in more than a year, and is intended to show that the two countries remain committed to arms control and keeping lines of communication open despite other differences.
