Lavrov wants more countries to join START

Other nuclear powers should join the US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says.

“The involvement of more nuclear powers to this process is a necessity that will become pressing in the near future,” Lavrov said in an interview with the news agency RIA Novosti.

If Moscow and Washington are able to “reach an agreement on the level of reductions that we are proposing, the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States will be comparable to those of other official nuclear powers,” Lavrov added.

Signed in 1991, START placed strict limits on the number of missiles and warheads in the Russian and US nuclear arsenals.

But the agreement expires on December 5.

Following a meeting on Tuesday with his US counterpart Hillary Clinton in Moscow, Lavrov said the two countries had made “substantial progress” in their negotiations for a new agreement.