Biden proposes to renew New START nuclear treaty between US and Russia
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The United States and Russia had signed the New Start for a period of ten years in 2011 when President Joe Biden was serving as vice president to Barack Obama.
President Joe Biden has proposed a five-year extension with Russia of the New START treaty.
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"I can confirm that the United States intends to seek a five-year extension of New Start as the treaty permits. The president has long been clear that the New Start treaty is in the national security interests of the United States," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, adding," this extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial, as it is at this time."
"The New Start is the only remaining treaty constraining Russian nuclear forces and is an anchor of strategic stability between our two countries," Psaki added.
The landmark agreement called the new strategic arms reduction treaty(START) expires on February 5.
The United States and Russia had signed the New Start for a period of ten years in 2011 when President Joe Biden was serving as vice president to Barack Obama.
The agreement limits the size of the two countries nuclear arsenals with the United States and Russia not allowed to deploy more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads each.
President Trump had failed to reach an agreement with Russia to keep the key deal alive despite the fact that Russia had expressed its desire to renew the deal quite a few times in the last year.
Reports suggest that Russia's ambassador to the US plans to meet with President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan on Thursday.
US and Russia account for 93 per cent of all nuclear warheads in the world as experts fear a new- larger arms race in case US and Russia fail to extend the nuclear deal.
Despite plans for an agreement on the arms deal, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the US still plans to investigate Russia in a number of cases including the solar-winds cyber hack, alleged bounties on US troops and alleged interference in the 2020 elections, including poisoning Kremlin's staunch Putin critic Alexey Navalny who is under detention after he reached Moscow from Germany.