The State Department is sending Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant Secretary for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, overseas, this week.
Gottemoeller travels to Belgium, the UK, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova from December 11-16 and Burns is off to India.
Gottemoeller is to participate in the U.S.-EU Verification Dialogue in Brussels. On December 13, she attends the “Challenges to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime” conference at Wilton Park, in the United Kingdom.
From December 14-16, travels to Sofia, Bucharest, and Chisinau to meet counterparts and discuss arms control-related issues of mutual interest, including the future of conventional arms control in Europe.
Gottemoeller was the chief negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.
Since 2000, she had been with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was a senior associate in the Carnegie Russia & Eurasia Program, working on US-Russian relations and nuclear security and stability, and served three years as director of the Carnegie Moscow Center until December 2008.
Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns meets with senior government of India officials in New Delhi, to discuss a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues.
In Mumbai, he is to meet business leaders and Consulate General employees for a ribbon-cutting at the new American Consulate General’s facility.
On December 13, Burns travels to Hanoi, Viet Nam for meetings with leaders there, to discuss economic cooperation, people-to-people ties, and US concerns over human rights.
In the interest of strengthening the US cooperative partnership with Malaysia, Deputy Secretary Burns is to meet senior officials and what the State Department calls “Malaysian opinion leaders,” in Kuala Lumpur, on December 14.
