Russia and the United States set a date to start negotiations on START III.

The American embassy in Rome were the preparatory consultations, the delegation of Russia and the United States, during which it was agreed to begin negotiations on a new Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START) in mid-May this year in Washington, DC , reported Agence France-Presse.
This was the first meeting of working groups of the two countries after the president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama during a private meeting in London agreed to a new contract.
The negotiators said that issues relating to the START treaty, will also be discussed during the visit of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov in the United States, which is scheduled for May 7.
The validity of the START-1 expire on 5 December 2009. It was signed on 30-31 July 1991 in Moscow, and came into force after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994. In January 1993 the two countries' presidents George Bush senior, and Boris Yeltsin signed the START-2 treaty, which prohibits the use of ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.
Despite the fact that the START-2 treaty was ratified by the parliaments of both countries, because it never came. Russia withdrew from it in response to the Americans break the ABM Treaty of 1972.
Obama and Medvedev agreed to start negotiations on a new START III treaty, even though the differences between the two countries on issues of deploying the American missile defense system in Europe preserved. Moscow sees the plans as a threat to national security. It also reached in the assessments and understanding the causes and consequences of armed conflict in South Ossetia in August 2008 and on cooperation with NATO, Georgia and Ukraine.