Russia and the US hope a new deal to reduce nuclear stockpiles will be agreed upon by December. Former US ambassador to West Germany Richard Burt discussed the new treaty with RT.
The new agreement is a key part the two nations’ attempts to rebuild their international relations.
According to Burt, who was a major player in hammering out the current treaty, Russia and the US should be able to complete negotiations by December:
“I do not have any special information,” he said, “but all the signs are that I think the two sides should be able to do it by the December deadline. If they don’t meet the deadline, they will probably have an agreement by early January.”
The treaty will be, Burt said, an innovation on agreements of the past:
“It will have some reductions from existing deployments, but it will be very much along the lines of the treaty that I worked on in the early 1990s,” he pointed out.
“It will limit warheads that are deployed on missiles that can be delivered by bombers, and it will leave both sides somewhere in the area of maybe 1650 warheads apiece,” he added.