MOSCOW. Feb 24 (Interfax) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had working meetings on Tuesday with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and director of the Foreign Ministry Security and Disarmament Department Anatoly Antonov who heads the Russian delegation to the Russian-US talks on the new START treaty.
"The meetings raised questions of preparing the new treaty in line with the document on the joint understanding on weapon negotiations signed by the presidents of the two countries during the visit of U.S. President Barack Obama to Moscow last July," the Kremlin press service reports.
Earlier on Tuesday Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a telephone conversation discussed the current state of bilateral talks on the new START treaty in Geneva and exchanged opinions about forthcoming work to settle the remaining questions.
"The sides confirmed the need to concentrate the work of the delegations in Geneva on strict observance of the fundamental understandings reached by the presidents of Russia and the United States and confirmed at the meeting of Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Nikolai Makarov and Chairman of the US of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen in Moscow in January," a report of the Russian Foreign Ministry information and press department says.
During the conversation initiated by the U.S. side Lavrov and Clinton also discussed preparations for the planned ministerial meeting of the quartet of mediators for the Middle East in Moscow, the report says.