McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay reports that Rice and Gates are headed to Moscow to discuss missile defense deployments in Europe, the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and, my favorite, extending the verification provisions of the START treaty:
Bush is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a rare joint mission to Moscow this week in a bid to break arms disputes that have helped plunge U.S.-Russian ties to their chilliest depth since the Cold War.
[snip]
Friday’s talks also will address the fate of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which is due to expire in December 2009.
[snip]
Unless it’s replaced, Moscow and Washington will lose the primary means by which they make sure that each is complying with a 2002 treaty that requires them to slash the numbers of nuclear warheads on their bombers, long-range missiles and submarines to no more than 2,200 by Dec. 31, 2012.