MOSCOW. March 20. KAZINFORM US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that American and Russian negotiators are "on the brink" of agreement on a nuclear arms reduction treaty; Kazinform refers to the Arab News.

After meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Clinton said she expects a treaty signing soon, although she mentioned no date or place.

"Our negotiating teams have reported that they have resolved all of the major issues and there are some technical issues that remain," she said at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"But we are on the brink of seeing a new agreement between the United States and Russia," Clinton added.

Her remarks were more pointedly optimistic than just a day earlier, when she cautioned against presuming success soon.

Russian officials had said previously that a principal sticking point in the nuclear talks was the US plan to build a defensive missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Russia has insisted that the new treaty acknowledge a link between defensive and offensive systems, and Lavrov was quoted recently as saying that a legally binding provision would be included.

President Barack Obama and Medvedev agreed during their July summit that the new treaty would contain such a provision, but experts said that negotiations had bogged down over the language on the linkage.

Romania agreed in January to install anti-ballistic missile interceptors as part of the revamped US missile shield, replacing the Bush administration's plans for interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic; Kazinform cites the Arab News.

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