Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton will exchange the instruments of ratification for the New START arms reduction treaty on Saturday.
The ceremony, after which the pact will formally enter into force, will be held in Munich, where the two top diplomats are attending a security conference.
The new deal, replacing START 1, which expired in December 2009, was signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama in Prague in April 2010. The document slashes the Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear arsenals to a maximum of 1,550 warheads, down from the current ceiling of 2,200.
Obama signed ratification papers for the New START - a keystone of his painstaking effort to reset relations with Russia - on Wednesday.
When ratifying the deal in December, the United States Senate adopted a resolution obligating the government to start bilateral talks on cutting the stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) - landmines, artillery shells and short-range missiles. Washington says Moscow has a larger number of these systems.
The U.S. Senate ratified the deal on December 22, 2010, but added several amendments to the resolution on ratification, including a demand to build up U.S. global missile defenses.
Medvedev signed the ratification documents January 28 after both houses of the Russian parliament ratified the new treaty adding some provisions to the ratification document and issuing two supplementary statements to the resolution on the treaty ratification.
MOSCOW, February 5 (RIA Novosti)
