U.S., Russia to meet in Geneva on ageing arms pact

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian officials will hold talks in Switzerland over the next week on a replacement for the aging 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a U.S. government spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

The talks will begin on Thursday and end on November 21, alternating between the two countries' missions to the United Nations' European headquarters in Geneva, the spokeswoman from the U.S. mission said.

There was no immediate confirmation from Russian officials but Moscow has said that it would be willing to consider U.S. proposals for a new version of the pact -- one of the key documents of the final years of the East-West Cold War.

Earlier this month and before a date was set, acting U.S. under-secretary of state for arms control John Rood said that Washington was looking forward to "a robust dialogue" with the Russian side on the issue.

But U.S. arms control experts said at that time it was unlikely that Moscow would be ready to make any serious move before President George W. Bush steps down next January. Bush will be replaced by Democrat Barack Obama.

The 1991 pact, concluded after a decade of negotiations and high-profile summitry between then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., runs out on December 5, 2009.

The United States and Russia, the main successor state to the Soviet Union which was dissolved at the end of 1991, announced in 2001 that they had carried out the huge cuts in the strategic weaponry they held that it provided for.

Under its provisions, talks on a successor agreement have to begin at least a year before the original START pact expires.

The U.S. wants a new accord to focus on limiting nuclear warheads rather than on the missile delivery systems which are at the center of the 1991 treaty. Russia has indicated that it is not happy with this approach.

Relations between the two powers have also been strained by U.S. plans to place parts of an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, countries that were part of the old Soviet bloc when START was negotiated.

Moscow regards this project as a threat to its security, although Washington says the system is meant for protection against "rogue" states like Iran. Earlier this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country would respond by stationing new missiles near Poland.

(Editing by Laura MacInnis and Angus MacSwan)