Russia and the United States have agreed on the text of a new nuclear disarmament treaty, with only the "periods and commas" still needing to be clarified, a top Moscow politician disclosed Friday, according to dpa. Konstantin Kossachov, head of the foreign policy committee of the State Duma, or parliament, disclosed news of a new accord to replace START, or the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, on Russian television. The 1991 START pact expired on December 5 despite intense negotiations by both sides throughout the year to reach a new deal. In Washington, the White House would not confirm that an agreement had been tentatively reached. "Our discussions continue," said Ben Chang, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Kossachov said technical details still needed to be finalized, but that the signing of the new treaty was possible by the end of the year. "There are a few technical details where the periods and commas still have to be evened out," Kossachov said. He said a possible treaty signing, however, would depend on the schedules of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and US President Barack Obama, who were to have met Friday afternoon privately at the world climate summit in Copenhagen. The two presidents had most recently, during their November 15 meeting in Singapore, stressed their commitment to getting a new accord reached, with Medvedev at the time speaking of giving "the negotiations an extra push." The goal of the new accord is reportedly to reduce the number of nuclear warheads to a maximum of 1,675 per country, while limiting delivery systems to 1,100 each. Any new treaty would have to be ratified by the US Senate and Duma. Earlier, the Interfax agency had reported - citing unnamed diplomatic and military sources - that the two sides had reached agreement on core issues but that some problems in hammering out the final text remained. On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had said there were still some problems with the technical formulations in the new accord. He accused the US of slowing down the work. Western diplomats in Moscow confirmed that there were difficulties in certain legal terms in the treaty text.
