MOSCOW, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton on Monday discussed preparations for a nuclear security summit and exchanged views over a new arms treaty in a telephone conversation, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
The top diplomats discussed preparations for an international nuclear security summit scheduled for April in Washington and negotiations on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1), the ministry said in a statement on its website.
They also touched upon the U.S. plans to deploy missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, the situation around the Iranian nuclear program, as well as other topics of mutual interest, the ministry said.
Russia and the United States resumed talks last week on a replacement for the START-1 that expired on Dec. 5, last year. A Kremlin aide said last Wednesday that the two countries could hammer out a new arms reduction pact in March or April.
Signing the new arms treaty is widely seen as a breakthrough for Moscow and Washington to "reset" ties, which in the final days of the Bush administration plunged to an unprecedented post-Cold War low.
