MOSCOW, August 10 (RIA Novosti) – Two agreements on nuclear industry cooperation, meant to be signed at the upcoming meeting of US and Russian presidents, will likely be salvaged despite the meeting’s cancellation, a newspaper said Saturday.
US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin were to sign the two deals at their meeting in Moscow on September 3, Russian daily Kommersant reported.
One deal was to boost bilateral contacts and information exchange on nuclear weapons proliferation under the aegis of Russia’s National Nuclear Threat Reduction Center, while the other was to allow Russian state-run nuclear monopoly Rosatom collaborate with US laboratories, the report said.
Obama canceled the meeting with Putin earlier this week over lack of prospects for progress in the bilateral agenda as well as Moscow’s harboring of accused US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
But the nuclear threat agreement will likely still be signed “in foreseeable future” to indicate that US-Russian military cooperation is not entirely on hold, Kommersant said, citing an unnamed Russian defense official.
The Rosatom deal is still at drafting stage, but may be signed by the heads of the Russian corporation and the US Department of Energy, not the presidents, once the document is ready, the newspaper said, citing another unnamed source familiar with the situation.
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