Geneva Talks Set to Complete Nuclear Pact
Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger will meet with Russia’s Foreign Minister Andrei A. Kozyrev next week in Geneva to hammer out the remaining details of an agreement reducing Russian and American nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds, the State Department announced Thursday.
If all goes as planned, the talks will clear the way for President Bush to sign the pact before he leaves office Jan. 20. Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin is expected to meet with Bush in Alaska for the formal signing.
The meeting is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.
Bush and Yeltsin reached an agreement in principle on the deep cuts in nuclear stocks during their summit in Washington last June. But the task of converting the “framework” agreement to detailed treaty language has taken far longer than expected.
To clear the way for the Eagleburger-Kozyrev talks, an American interagency team headed by Undersecretary of State Frank Weisner met with a similar Russian delegation earlier this week, also in Geneva.
The pact is expected to reduce the stocks of nuclear weapons from the current level of about 10,000 each to between 3,000 and 3,500 by the year 2003. It also will impose a total ban on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with more than one warhead. Multiple-warhead missiles will continue to be permitted on submarines.
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