MOSCOW (AP) - Russia and the United States are near agreement on drastic cuts in long-range nuclear arsenals but remain at odds over a U.S. missile defense, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the arms-reduction deal could be ready for the next summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, tentatively scheduled for Moscow next spring.
But the U.S.-Russian disagreement over missile defense is so deep that Russia is bracing for the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal from the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, Ivanov told a joint news conference with Powell at the Kremlin.
Despite the missile-defense impasse, both Ivanov and Powell were upbeat about prospects for wrapping up a deal to reduce nuclear warheads.
But Powell told reporters that both countries ``recognize the need for a codification of the new levels we're going to...It might be in the form of a treaty, or some other way of codifying it.''
Putin participated in part of the Powell-Ivanov meeting, but did not attend the news conference.