US expects arms announcement today

A summit meeting between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will achieve progress on an arms control treaty, culminating in an announcement today, a White House official has said.

"We think the summit will register progress toward an agreement," Gary Samore, special assistant to Mr Obama and the White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, told reporters yesterday evening.

"There's an awful lot of work that's going to be required in order to finish this agreement by the end of the year," he said.

Mr Obama arrives in Moscow today for meetings with Mr Medvedev that are expected to touch upon a new nuclear arms pact and improved cooperation in the US-led Afghan war effort.

Tomorrow Mr Obama meets Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who still dominates Russian politics and picked Mr Medvedev as his successor.

Mr Samore said the arms agreement would provide a basis for continuing negotiations between the world's two biggest nuclear powers on further cuts in their arsenals.

Progress in Moscow will form the basis for a treaty to be signed by December, when an existing comprehensive pact known as START-1 expires.

The aim is to reduce the number of deployed warheads below the 1,700-2,200 range which both sides agreed to reach by 2012 under a successor treaty signed in 2002.

Mr Samore declined to say whether he expected today's announcement to include new numbers on warheads and delivery vehicles.

The talks, which were launched by the two presidents at their first meeting in April, are complicated by differing philosophies on warhead deployment and by Russian objections to US missile defence plans, he said.

President Obama said in an interview with the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta that he would not accept an effort by Moscow to link arms control talks to American proposals to locate a missile defence shield in Europe.