Russia, U.S. seen closing in on arms deal

U.S. Air Force technicians perform an electrical check on an LGM-30F Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in its silo at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri in this January 1, 1980 file photo. U.S. and Russian officials appear tantalizingly close to a new arms deal to replace the 1991 START treaty, the biggest nuclear weapons reduction in history and a lynching in the post-Cold War balance of power.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In another era, the world's fate could hang in the balance.

U.S. and Russian officials appear tantalizingly close to a new arms deal to replace the 1991 START treaty, the biggest nuclear weapons reduction in history and a lynching in the post-Cold War balance of power.

But despite the public optimism in Washington and Moscow, the existing START treaty lapsed on December 5 with no new agreement in place and officials are still unable to detail when and where the final version may be approved.

"I think both sides are committed to completing the START treaty. It is just a question of when that will be achieved," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on Thursday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the agreement would be signed "soon" and sources on both sides signal only a few elements remain to be worked out on the new treaty, which would further cut the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States.

"They still are hard at it," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Thursday.

The new START treaty is part of an effort to "reset" U.S.-Russia relations and both sides have pledged to abide by the terms of the old agreement until a new version can be cemented into place.

Among the issues holding up the treaty were the numbers of allowable weapons and verification procedures, both of which require detailed discussion.

"Negotiations eventually get down to near the finish line when you have a small number of issues and those issues have a high level of complexity," Crowley said.

Last July, Obama and Medvedev outlined a framework for the new treaty, restricting deployed strategic warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 while limiting the number of delivery platforms to between 500 and 1,100.

CONFIDENCE

Despite the slow going, analysts expect a new treaty by year's end -- saying both sides have too much invested politically to allow much more delay.

Many now point to Obama's trip to Copenhagen for the end of the global climate conference on December 18 as one possible moment for a signing ceremony.

"Everyone assumes they are going to get this done," said James Collins, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia now director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Collins said Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed on the need to reduce weapons stockpiles, and want a successor treaty to START before a major review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty next year.

"It is one thing not to have inspection or verifications for a month or two, its quite another to not to have it for a year or two. In that case, you begin to lose confidence," said Collins. "Both have a great interest in the predictability of what the other side is doing."

But old habits die hard, and where some see due diligence others suspect diplomatic skullduggery.

One noted U.S. analyst suggested Russia may have purposefully delayed the negotiations to bring Obama down a peg before he collected his Nobel Peace Prize -- awarded on Thursday in recognition of his efforts to cut nuclear weapons.

"The Russians may have overplayed their hand, figuring (incorrectly) that Obama was so eager for a deal that he'd grant them last-minute concessions," Strobe Talbott, a Russia expert and president of the Brookings Institution wrote in a blog.

That drew a chuckle -- if not an outright denial -- from the State Department's Crowley: "That's kind of a Cold War kind of question," he told a news briefing.

(Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Chris Wilson)