MOSCOW. June 18 (Interfax-AVN) - U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow has not excluded the possibility that the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, signed by Russia and the United States in May, could be ratified before the end of the year.
There is a common desire to synchronize the treaty ratification, this may be done before the end of the political season, he told a Tuesday news conference in Moscow.
At a Tuesday meeting with Dmitri Rogozin, the chairman of the Duma committee for international affairs, they discussed the prospects for the ratification of the treaty by the two parliaments. In an interview with Interfax and ITAR-TASS after the meeting, Vershbow said that the treaty is very popular in the United States. It provides for the radical reduction of strategic potentials and flexibility in that field to both sides - not every detail requires verification, he said.
When asked whether the situation with START-II, in which the Duma ratified the document and the Congress did not, may recur, the ambassador said he did not think so. The ambassador expressed confidence that there will be no problems with the ratification of the new Russian-American treaty and predicted that an overwhelming majority in Congress would vote for it.
He spoke against any additional conditions or reservations of the sides accompanying the treaty because they would complicate the ratification process. If any need for addenda does arise, additional discussions will have to be held to make the reservations suitable for both sides, he said.