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MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's deputy foreign minister said Wednesday that a meeting with a U.S. counterpart was a starting point for working out fraught arms control issues.
Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Andrea Thompson met Wednesday in Prague.
Russia was rattled by the U.S. withdrawal this year from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and has repeatedly expressed concern about the START treaty, another key arms control deal which runs out in 2021.
Ryabkov expressed disappointment that the talks with Thompson did not "form some kind of meeting calendar or a specific sequence of our actions," but he said "the totality of the results of today's event is no longer about any one-time contact; it will be followed by new conversations," according to Russian news agencies.
In a tweet, Thompson said she "raised a range of US national security priorities and strategic security issues on which the U.S. would like to engage in a more constructive dialogue with Russia."
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