U.S. President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday night to work with Russia to further reduce the nuclear weapons stockpiled by the two countries.

"We will engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals, and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands, because our ability to influence others depends on our willingness to lead," Obama said in his prime-time State of the Union address to the joint session of the Congress.

The president offered no details, but a recent New York Times report said White House officials were seeking a cut that would take the U.S. arsenal of deployed weapons to just above 1,000.

The United States has about 1,700 nuclear weapons, and the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which Obama signed with Russia in 2010, commits Washington and Moscow to cutting their existing warhead ceilings by 30 percent over the next 10 years from the current 2,200 to 1,550 and limiting each side to 700 deployed long-range missiles and heavy bombers.

Obama was weighing how to reach an informal agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin for mutual cuts within the framework of the new START treaty, the New York Times said.

Obama has lately secured an agreement with the U.S. military to cut the American nuclear force by roughly a third in size, the paper said. Endi

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