Diplomats said the three day meeting on the START treaty would be held behind closed doors at an undisclosed location, mirroring the discretion surrounding the first round in Moscow nearly two weeks ago.

"On the details of the negotiation, I think we prefer to keep that in private right now. I think that's just the best way to conduct these kinds of negotiations," US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.

First results from the talks are expected to be unveiled by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev during their summit meeting in Moscow on July 6 to 8, a Russian diplomat said.

Despite a thaw in US-Russian relations following the departure of the Bush administration, analysts were expecting little concrete progress on the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires on December 5.

On top of the complex technical issues surrounding the landmark treaty -- which took a decade to reach agreement on the deep cuts in US and Soviet nuclear arsenals after the fall of the Iron Curtain -- the negotiations are also hampered by differing ambitions.

"The sides are not in the same position. Obama needs a result to demonstrate that the 'reset' of US-Russian relations is getting somewhere," said Evgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation.

Earlier this year, Vice President Joseph Biden unveiled the Obama administration's fresh approach to fractious US relations with the old Cold War foe, saying it wanted to press the 'reset' button.

Disarmament expert Jozef Goldblat said the START talks allowed the United States to create a climate "propitious for help with other more complicated subjects" where Washington needs Moscow's support, such as Iran and North Korea's controversial nuclear programmes.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has not concealed Moscow's desire to broaden the talks to take account of the planned US anti-missile shield in Europe.

The United States has insisted that the defensive shield is meant to counter an Iranian threat.

But Russia regards the shield, which would partly be based in former eastern bloc countries close to its borders, as a threat to its own security.

"The number one stumbling block is the anti missile shield," said Volk. "Moscow wants Washington to give up deployment but the Americans are against that."

Russian military analyst Alexander Goltz said the negotiations also helped Moscow recover some of its prestige.

"The Russians are aiming to make the process last as long as possible, because the talks restore their status as a world power," he explained.

Russian officials hailed the "constructive and business-like" atmosphere of the first round, but US delegation chief Rose Gottemoeller warned before the talks even began that the process could be more drawn out than expected.

Goltz played down expectations for the Obama-Medvedev summit because the two sides were too far apart.

But veteran disarmament observer Goldblat suggested an elegant way out: a five year extension of START that would give time for negotiations on a "broader" disarmament deal between the world's biggest nuclear powers.

earlier related report
UN disarmament conference agrees work plan: spokeswoman
Nuclear powers broke more than a decade of deadlock on Friday by agreeing to restart arms control talks in the Conference on Disarmament, the United Nations and diplomats said.

The 65 nations in the permanent disarmament negotiating forum, which includes all nuclear weapons states, "agreed on a work plan for 2009," UN spokeswoman Elena Ponomareva told journalists.

It included a working group that will carry out full "negotiations" for an international ban on the production of new nuclear bombing making material, according to a summary of the Conference decision.

The breakthrough marked the first time since 1996 that member states had agreed on the substance of what they should negotiate, amid conflicting demands for full nuclear disarmament, the ban on fissile material and the arms race in outer space.

British disarmament ambassador John Duncan called the unanimous decision "a terrific result breaking 12 years worth of deadlock."

"As we've been saying we need to move from a decade of deadlock to a decade of decisions, and now we're on the path to making those decisions," he added.

The thaw in US-Russia relations this year following Barack Obama's arrival in the White House, and a renewed superpower pledge this month to back the separate Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty generated added momentum, diplomats said.

The breakthrough came after a growing number of countries signalled they were ready to support a compromise proposal drawn up by a group of non-nuclear states led by Algeria earlier this month.

Even North Korea rallied around the decision on Friday, despite its continued defiance of "hostile" international concern over its nuclear programme and the sharp spike in tensions on the Korean peninsula since Pyongyang tested a nuclear bomb on Monday.

Duncan said: "We were all concerned about the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), how they would react."

"The first reaction was a difficult one but they have come through and they support it today."

One of the most contentious subjects in the Geneva conference has been the proposal first tabled in 1995 for talks on banning the production of fissile bomb-making material, championed mainly by Western countries.

Russia and China had countered with demands for a treaty preventing an arms race in outer space, which the United States had rejected, especially under the administration of former president George W. Bush.

Younger nuclear weapon powers Pakistan and India were demanding talks on full nuclear disarmament, while non-nuclear states also sought assurances that they would not be nuclear targets for weapons powers.

All those issues were included in the Algerian-brokered compromise proposal, which set up parallel working groups on each topic.

Each group will work at different levels of intensity ranging from full "negotiations" for the fissile ban to discussions or "exchange of views" on other issues for now, according to the UN summary.

"All the questions are, from our point of view, important for international security," said conference president Idris Al-Jazairy, the Algerian ambassador.

Indian ambassador Hamid Ali Rao said that New Delhi supported the work plan and negotiations on a verifiable Fissile Missile Cut-off Treaty.

"While joining the consensus on the programme of work, we wish to place on record our disappointment that the conference could not decide on launching negotiations on nuclear disarmament," he said Friday, expressing the hope that those talks would evolve.

Washington signalled Tuesday that it was also ready to put aside its qualms and resume talks.

In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the conference in Geneva that a fissile material ban would mark "an important milestone in the processes of nuclear disarmament and strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime."

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