WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday vowed that the United States will maintain a credible and modernized nuclear deterrent after the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
He accused Russia of noncompliance with the New START, the last U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control treaty, which expired on Thursday.
Rubio vowed that his country will negotiate from a position of strength and maintain a credible, modernized U.S. nuclear deterrent while seeking to reduce global nuclear threats.
"We understand that this process can take time. Past agreements, including New START, took years to negotiate and were built upon decades of precedent," he added, suggesting a strategic vacuum may last for a long time.
Russia and the United States recognize the need to begin negotiations on the New START as soon as possible, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
As the world's two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia together possess about 87 percent of the global nuclear arsenal.
Following the lapse of New START, for the first time in more than half a century, the world has entered a period in which U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear forces are subject to no binding limits, no inspections and no transparency. ■
