Pompeo Sees Arms Control Deal With Russia by the End of the Year

‘We made real progress in the last couple weeks,’ he says
U.S. dropped its insistence that China join in current talks

Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state, sits during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 30, 2020. Pompeo is testifying on the State Department's fiscal 2021 budget request.Photographer: Greg Nash/The Hill

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By Nick Wadhams

August 31, 2020 at 8:54 PM UTC

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Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the U.S. has made progress toward a new nuclear arms control agreement with Russia after talks earlier in August in Vienna, and raised the prospect that the two sides could sign a deal by the end of the year.

“We made real progress in the last couple weeks,” Pompeo said in an interview with Washington radio station WMAL, referring to talks between U.S. envoy Marshall Billingslea and Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. “I hope we could get that done before the end of the year -- would be a good thing for the world, take down risk from nuclear weapons.”