The agreement will be signed by US President George W. Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin at a Friday summit here that should help establishing guidelines for a 21st century partnership that Moscow and Washington have been eyeing for months.

The treaty's final wording was decided by senior diplomats in Moscow on Wednesday as a host of US officials descended on the Russian capital to prepare an additional partnership declaration covering everything from trade to the war on terror.

The crowning agreement of the fourth Putin-Bush meeting will be a treaty that slashes the ceiling on the number of nuclear warheads each side can keep on active duty by two-thirds over the coming decade to a range of 1,700-2,200 each.

Russian officials quickly stressed that the treaty also touched on Moscow's demands for the cuts to be transparent and verifiable.

"Of course, we are also talking about the ability to verify the established agreements," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko was quoted as saying by Interfax.

He added that the agreement "covers everything that is linked to the reduction of strategic offensive weapons."

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Tuesday that the treaty and accompanying declaration guarantee Russian interests like few other nuclear agreements of the past.

"We have the first legally binding treaty to be signed by the US administration," Ivanov said as Moscow launched its offensive to win approval for the treaty from the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The two sides "have created favorable conditions for ensuring national security," Ivanov said. "This is a period of unprecedented activity in our international activities."

The Communist Party and nationalist elements in the military have criticized the agreement as a fig leaf which leaves both sides with the option of stockpiling its decommissioned missile for future deployment.

They say that this would leave Washington with an advantage because a large portion of Russia's warheads will outlive their expiration date in the next few years anyway and that Moscow lacks the finances to replenish its arsenal.

But the Kremlin has defend the agreement as serving Russia's interests, with Putin pressing on his campaign to move Moscow's international policies closer in line with those of the West.

A senior Duma lawmaker said Tuesday that the treaty is likely to sail through parliament, where communist and nationalist forces have lost much of their support since Putin's election two years ago.

The treaty will signed just days ahead of a NATO-Russia summit in Rome in which Moscow will also win an unprecedented voice in the decision-making process of the Western military alliance.

earlier related report
NATO Focuses On Change, Enlargement, Cooperation With Russia
Reykjavik (AFP) May 14, 2002 - The world's mightiest military alliance on Tuesday acknowledged it could not deal with a new breed of terrorist threat and vowed change, spending more, growing and forging closer ties with Russia.

"The (September 11) terrorist attacks on the United States were... a wake-up call," NATO Secretary General George Robertson told a meeting of alliance foreign ministers. "Security threats can no longer be measured in fleets of warships, tanks or warplanes.

"Deadly attacks are no longer launched by governments," he said, "And they can strike without warning... Normal concepts of security have been shattered, traditional ways of doing business no longer work... NATO must change radically."

A day after the US and Russia agreed to a landmark cut in nuclear warheads, NATO foreign ministers met here and sealed their own accord with Moscow to bury the Cold War hatchet and formalize new cooperation, notably against terrorism.

They reached a long-expected agreement on a joint cooperation council - the NATO-Russia Council - symbolizing a new rapprochement in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US.

"We have reached agreement on the working rules and program for a totally new institution, the NATO-Russia Council," Robertson said after Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met with his 19 NATO counterparts.

The accord, following five months of sometimes tough negotiations, will be signed at a NATO-Russia summit in Rome on May 28. It symbolized an end to what Robertson had earlier described as "countries that spent four decades glowering at each other across a wall of hatred and fear."

Perhaps the single most telling signal of a looming sea change in East-West ties was when Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov arrived here for the meeting.

Ivanov, spotting Colin Powell across the crowded conference room, grinned broadly, extended his arms and made a beeline for his US counterpart.

As cameras flashed and ministers gawked, Powell and Ivanov embraced long and warmly, then held one another at arms length, nodding and smiling.

Earlier, Powell told a news conference that trade issues between the US and Russia were now more of a concern to him than military ones.

"Years ago, when I came to NATO meetings as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, I worried about strategic weapons going back and forth," he said. "Now we are in a poultry dispute with Russia, so I'm more worried about chickens going back and forth, and this is good."

Russia slapped an import ban on US chicken and turkey on March 10, citing health concerns over the use of antibiotics and scares of salmonella, a bacterium that causes food poisoning, but lifted it a month later.

"I think our relationship with Russia is on a very sound footing," Powell said, referring to NATO, "and I think it will be greatly improved as a result of the upcoming summit" in Rome.

"The treaty we concluded with Russia yesterday on the strategic framework as well as the agreement we will reach this afternoon on the NATO-Russia Council is indicative of how things are improving with Russia as we move forward into the 21st century," he said.

"The countries that spent four decades glowering at each other across a wall of hatred and fear now have the opportunity to transform future Euro-Atlantic security for the better," said Robertson.

NATO's next eastward enlargement into former Warsaw Pact territory, which Moscow once feared but now is apparently resigned to, was the other major agenda item in the two-day meeting on this rocky, windswept island nation, one of NATO's founding members.

Nine countries -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania -- have applied, with the three Baltic states plus Slovenia seen to be in the lead.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO in March 1999.

Robertson declined to say how many of the nine would be invited into membership negotiations at the NATO summit in Prague next November, coyly placing the number at "somewhere between zero and nine."

"Today's meeting is a key stepping stone to Prague," he said.

"In the wake of September 11, it is more important than ever that the Euro-Atlantic family of nations moves closer together," said Robertson. "Enlargement strengthens our alliance."

The 19 NATO ministers agreed in a final declaration on the need to increase defense capacity and spending, a theme Powell hammered at in his press conference.

"We need to modernize NATO's force structure and lift capability," he said. "The kinds of challenges NATO will be facing in the future will not always be located in Central Europe, and NATO has to have the ability to move... Greater investment is needed in intelligence and communications, navigational devices."

"The United States has the biggest military budget in NATO and we are continuing to add to our defense budget to deal with the threats we know are out there, we see are out there, and our colleagues in NATO should be doing likewise," the US Secretary of State added.

Allen Nacheman in Reykjavik contributed to this report.

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