UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Friday congratulated the US and Russian presidents on their agreement to further limit nuclear arms and said it would help broader international talks later this year, dpa reported.
The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) added a "significant impetus" to the talks in May in New York about the global agreement on nuclear non-proliferation, Ban said.
Those talks, on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, will focus on the every-five-year evaluation of that deal.
Ban said he hoped "that the Russian Federation and the United States will continue their efforts in the pursuit of additional measures to reduce and eliminate all nuclear weapons."
"I encourage other nuclear-weapon states to follow suit," he said.
Ban called the agreement between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev an "important milestone for the international efforts to advance nuclear disarmament and to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."