Russia, US to sign arms pact, may miss deadline

The United States and Russia will sign a deal this year to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons but may miss an early December deadline, a Kremlin source told Reuters on Friday.

Diplomats from the two biggest nuclear powers are trying to prepare a new agreement on cutting atomic weapons before the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires on December 5.

The new accord will be signed "in a European country" in December, the Kremlin source told Reuters in Minsk, where President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting regional leaders.

"We may not be able to do it by December 5," said the Kremlin source, when asked about when the presidents would sign the deal. The source did not give a reason for the delay.

Presidents Barack Obama and Medvedev are both due to make visits in Europe in the next few weeks and diplomats say the two sides are trying to agree a time when the leaders can meet to sign the deal.

When asked about when the signing would take place, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov refused to give a date, saying the deal "will be signed in accordance with the orders of the presidents based on the timeframes set by them."

Obama and Medvedev said in a joint statement on April 1 that they intended to find a replacement for the deal by the time START-1 expired, a step the Kremlin and White House say will "reset" relations after the friction and rows of recent years.

"This treaty is a great move ahead and will improve relations between the United States and Russia," said Roland Timerbayev, a former Soviet ambassador and nuclear arms negotiator. He said it was too early to draw any conclusions about the significance of missing the December 5 deadline.

Hopes of a deal to replace START-1, which was signed just months before the Soviet Union broke up, rose in September when Obama said the United States would roll back a plan to deploy a European missile shield that Moscow had bitterly opposed.

Russia has so far refused to support US calls for the threat of sanctions against Iran, but diplomats say that cooperation between the two former Cold War foes on Iran is good, setting the tone for a START deal.

Negotiators in Geneva have been battling a variety of complex technical questions to thrash out an agreement.

"The delegations of Russia and the United States are working incessantly but not looking at the time," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that finding a properly working deal was more important than meeting a deadline.

"The timeframe for signing new agreement is important but does not define the negotiating process; rather, (it is defined) by the striving of the leaders of Russia and the United States to agree a full, properly working bilateral agreement," it said.

Obama and Medvedev agreed in July to cut the number of deployed nuclear weapons by around a third from current levels to 1,500-1,675 each.

After the cuts — which have to be made within seven years of a new treaty taking effect — the United States and Russia will still have enough firepower to destroy the world several times over.