U.S. national security advisor James Jones is visiting Moscow this week for talks aimed at establishing a new U.S.-Russian treaty limiting their nuclear arsenals, the White House said Tuesday. Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, will meet with senior Russian officials for negotiations on an arms agreement that would follow the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires in December. Jones will visit Moscow on October 28 and 29 at the invitation of Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's national security council. The White House also said Jones is scheduled to meet this week with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other senior Russian officials. The United States and Russia hope to reach agreement by December on a strategic arms agreement to replace START, which was signed in 1991 just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. At a Moscow summit in July, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warhead in the two strategic arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years. The two leaders also agreed to cut the number of ballistic missile carriers to between 500 and 1,100.
