Productive meetings between top US officials and their Russian counterparts in Moscow last week have brought the sides close to agreement.
Russian and US negotiators are likely to agree on a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty within weeks, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.
Productive meetings between top US officials and their Russian counterparts in Moscow last week have brought the sides close to agreement on a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), Igor Lyakin-Frolov said.
"The talks were successful, and as a result we can hope that it will take just a few weeks for negotiators to come up with a document," Lyakin-Frolov told Reuters.
Forging a new pact is a key element of US president Barack Obama's efforts to mend ties between Russia and the United States, which plunged to post-Cold War lows after Russia's war with pro-Western Georgia in August 2008.
The United States and Russia also hope it will boost efforts to curb global nuclear arms proliferation by sending a message that the countries possessing all but 5 percent of the world's arsenals are making cuts.
After failing to put a new treaty in place before START I expired last month, both sides have expressed hope for a signing before a non-proliferation conference starts in late April.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that the treaty was "95%" agreed. US officials have also expressed confidence a treaty could be ready in weeks.
US national security adviser James Jones and joint chiefs of staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen held talks in Moscow last week. Full negotiations are to resume in Geneva on Monday.
Last July, Obama and Medvedev agreed the new treaty should cut the number of nuclear warheads on each side to between 1,500 and 1,675.
Officials have said the sides were still negotiating over verification measures, which Russia wants to be much less strict than under START.
Lyakin-Frolov indicated that one issue still being discussed was telemetry -- the remote monitoring of missiles in launch and flight.
On the divisive issue of missile defence, Lyakin-Frolov said the United States must take Russia's interests into account in the negotiations but suggested the pact might not address the issue in detail.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin said last month that the United States should give Russia telemetry on anti-missile systems if it wants data on Russian offensive missiles, a potential deal-breaker because the US Senate is unlikely to ratify a pact encompassing missile defense.
Medvedev said on Sunday that Russia would raise the missile defence issue when talks resume.
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