France believes that signing could take place September, the head of the Russian arms trade agency, Mikhail Dmitriev Wednesday told state news agency RIA Novosti. He added, however, that Russia is more relaxed and envisions a signing by the end of 2010, at the latest.

Negotiations between the countries will now focus on the exact look of the deal.

Russia has agreed to buy at least one Mistral, worth an estimated $675 million, and build three more in partnership with French shipbuilder DCNS. Paris wants to sell two ships and built two more.

The 650-foot Mistral is capable of transporting and deploying 16 helicopters, up to 70 vehicles and 450 soldiers, although troop numbers can be doubled for short-term deployment.

The deal would be Russia's largest with a Western country and the first major one with a NATO member.

Russian navy officials began calling for the vessel earlier this year after they were reportedly frustrated with the time it took their Black Sea fleet to carry out amphibious landing operations in the five-day war with Georgia in 2008.

The deal is highly controversial with Russia's neighbors.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said a Mistral carrier would enable Russia to invade all former Soviet Republics within hours instead of weeks.

Estonia warned that Paris, with the sale, would hand Russia a considerable military advantage in the Baltic Sea.

Paris has tried to appease those concerns, vowing that the Mistrals would be sold to Russia as civilian vessels without military equipment.

Critics aren't convinced.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, last week urged Paris to abandon the sale she said could inflict "irreparable damage" on NATO and trans-Atlantic ties.

"This sale threatens to shake the NATO alliance to its core, bolstering Russia's offensive military capabilities as it intensifies its campaign of intimidation against neighboring countries," she wrote in a commentary in newspaper The Hill. "Empowering Russia with such capabilities blatantly undermines the security of those NATO allies that are withstanding Russia's policies of intimidation and outright aggression."

The typical armament for a Mistral includes two Simbad missile launchers and four 12.7mm M2-HB Browning machine guns.

Equipped with a 69-bed hospital, the Mistral carriers in service with the French navy are integrated into the NATO Response Force and have completed U.N. and EU-led peacekeeping missions.

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