US, Russia delegations to discuss arms control in Geneva

US high-level delegation will meet with their Russian counterparts in Geneva this week to pursue an arms control treaty in Geneva on Wednesday to explore the concept of a new accord limiting nuclear arsenals that could eventually include China, senior U.S. officials said on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said that he would like to see a “next generation” arms control deal with Russia and China to cover all types of nuclear weapons. He has broached the topic individually with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, including most recently at the G20 summit in Osaka last month.

China’s Foreign Ministry has said that the country had no interest in joining such talks.

“At present we cannot see the preconditions or basis for China participating in these negotiations between the United States and Russia,” ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing.

The meeting comes just two weeks before the US withdraws from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, or I.N.F., on the grounds of Russian violations.

The treaty required both countries to eliminate short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles.

Beijing has long argued that it maintains only a relatively small arsenal of weapons for deterrence. But the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in May that China is “likely to at least double the size of its nuclear stockpile” in the next decade.

Even so, the United States and Russia together still possess more than 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world today. According to the Arms Control Association, the United States has 6,185 warheads, while Russia has roughly 6,490 and China has about 290.

U.S. officials also are not planning to discuss renewal of the 2011 New START treaty, a U.S.-Russia arms control pact which limits deployed strategic nuclear weapons.

One of the officials told reporters it would be “premature” to talk about New START - which is set to expire in February 2021 but can be extended for five years if both sides agree, calling the issues a “next-year problem."