MOSCOW. Aug 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and U.S. Senator Richard Lugar will meet in Moscow on Thursday to discuss U.S. aid in destroying Russian chemical and strategic offensive weapons covered by the START-1 Treaty, a source in the Defense Ministry told Interfax-Military News Agency on Wednesday.
"Ivanov will meet the U.S. senator on Thursday and discuss with him the implementation of the American program on interaction with Russia on the destruction of chemical weapons and strategic offensive weapons," the source said.
Lugar is one of co-authors of the Nunn-Lugar program on the provision of aid to Russia in the sphere of WMD scrapping.
The American senator already studied the work on the program aimed at stepping up security at Russian defense enterprises.
"Lugar visited a nuclear fleet shipyard near the city of Murmansk where he studied the scrapping of nuclear submarines at the Nerpa shipyard, biological institutes in Moscow that are working on a vaccine against anthrax being supported by the Nunn- Lugar program," the source stressed.
Lugar also visited the Surovatinka enterprise in the city of Nizhny Novgorod that is scrapping SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles based on railway platforms as well as SS-17, SS-18 and SS-19 missiles.
Lugar will complete his visit to Russia on Friday. According to the U.S. embassy, a total of 5,970 strategic nuclear warheads, 446 ballistic missiles, 432 booster rockets, 483 long- range air-to-surface missiles with nuclear warheads, 396 launching devices for submarines, 322 submarine-launched missiles, 24 strategic nuclear-powered submarines and 194 silos for nuclear tests have been destroyed in Russia since 1991 in the framework of the Nunn-Lugar program.
The program also financed the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to Russia.