START Talks On Hold Until Mid-January

ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: US and Russian negotiators, who have been haggling over a replacement for the START treaty in Geneva for months, returned home this weekend to break for the winter holidays. The State Department says talks won’t restart until mid-January. Their return effectively rules out any chance that the two countries will meet a year-end deadline, which was already three weeks past the initial goal of December 5, when the original treaty expired. “Our goal remains to conclude a solid treaty for the president's signature as soon as possible,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters, refusing to be pinned down on a new goal for the agreement’s completion. The START treaty set targets for each country to reduce its nuclear weapons stockpile and puts in place mechanisms to monitor each others’ progress. A follow-on agreement is meant to continue those reductions. Both countries were able to establish an agreement to keep key components in force until a replacement is signed and ratified, but it does not include some key monitoring programs. “We had hoped to resolve the complex issues that these treaty negotiations present by the end of the year.  I don't think that we're particularly, you know, concerned, given the complexity of these issues, that it's taking a longer period of time,” Crowley said. “We remain confident that, you know, given good faith and the, you know, ongoing efforts of both sides, that this will get done.” Senior US officials last week told ABC News an agreement remains hung up over how to verify the arms reductions. Russia has told the US it does not see the need for the robust monitoring mechanism the US wants, the officials said. According to US officials, both sides have already agreed to reduce their nuclear warhead stockpiles to within the goal of 1500-1675 established last July. President Obama met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev when the two were in Copenhagen for climate change talks last Friday. “We’ve been making excellent progress. We are quite close to an agreement,” Obama said at the time. Speaking in Russian, Medvedev said there were “a few technical details…which require further work. I hope that we will be able to do that in a brief period of time.”