START III was a proposed bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and Russia that was meant to reduce the deployed nuclear weapons arsenals of both countries drastically and to continue the weapons reduction efforts that had taken place in the START I and START II negotiations. The framework for negotiations of the treaty began with talks in Helsinki between US president Bill Clinton and Russian president Boris Yeltsin in 1997, although Clinton brought up the topic to Yeltsin as early as 1994. However, negotiations broke down, and the treaty was never signed.