Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said Tuesday that the main obstacle to replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, is Washington’s plan to build a missile defense system, which he said endangered the cold war-era balance of power.

Georgia and Russia appear about to reopen their border and end a four-year trade blockade - a step welcomed by many in the region, but one that some fear could lead to new ethnic clashes nearly a year and a half after a brief war.

Russia cut off all transit with Georgia in 2006, amid souring relations between the Kremlin and Georgia's pro-Western government. On Dec. 10, however, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced in Moscow that he saw "no obstacles" to reopening the Zemo Larsi checkpoint and resuming direct flights between the two countries. The next day, a spokesman for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili welcomed the move.

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met on December 18 on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Copenhagen to discuss nuclear reductions.

However, this discussion proved no more successful than the climate change conference proper, as the two heads of state emerged from the talks saying almost in chorus that they still needed to finalize technical details. In diplomatic code, this usually means there are serious predicaments hampering an agreement.

President Obama had hoped to announce a deal with Russia this week to extend the 1991 nuclear arms treaty known as Start and make some modest additional cuts in both sides’ arsenals. On Friday, negotiators were still stuck on how to verify the agreement, and American officials are now saying it won’t be done at least until January.

They need to conclude this work as soon as possible so the two sides can move on to a far more ambitious agreement. The Times reported on Friday that Washington and Moscow are already quietly working on a new deal that would make even deeper cuts in the number of deployed weapons and for the first time reduce both the number of stored warheads and tactical nuclear weapons — the thousands of smaller bombs that are terrifyingly vulnerable to clandestine sale or theft.

Russia should stop seeing the West as a threat, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Thursday, as he called for a new partnership between Moscow and the transatlantic alliance.

Relations between NATO and Moscow plunged to a post-Cold War low after the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, but Rasmussen has made improving ties a priority since coming to office in August.

A derelict building stands on the broad Darul Aman Avenue leading to Afghanistan’s parliament. In the 1990s, gunfire, shelling and rocket attacks caused its roof to cave in, and these days the air inside is foul. Abandoned, the structure is now primarily a haven for drug addicts.

But the building may not be neglected for much longer. The Russian government has expressed a desire to renovate the former Russian Cultural Center as part of its plan to restore up to 150 industrial, commercial and cultural sites that Moscow had sponsored during its 10-year occupation of Afghanistan, says Russian Ambassador Andrey Avetisyan.

NATO wants Russia to help the escalating war effort in Afghanistan by donating more weapons — including AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers, field artillery and armored vehicles — and by providing other military assistance to the expanding Afghan army, officials said Friday.

Alliance spokesman James Appathurai said there was "definitely scope for more" collaboration with Russia in the war.

Russia plans to give the World Trade Organization a document in the next few weeks aimed at clearing up confusion over its plans for joining the world trade body, a Russian official said Thursday.

"To my knowledge, by the end of the year," Aleksey Shishayev, head of the economic office at the Russian Embassy in Washington, told reporters when asked when Moscow would deliver the information requested by the WTO's 153 members.

It was supposed to be the centrepiece of President Obama’s attempt to reset relations between the US and Russia. Instead, an agreement to cut nuclear weapon arsenals was overshadowed by a scramble to prevent the collapse of an existing arms treaty.

Late-night bargaining in Geneva between US and Russian negotiators failed to produce an agreement to replace the landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which expired today. Its demise meant the collapse of the system for monitoring the two largest nuclear stockpiles in the world.

The Obama administration is looking to press in early January for a new round of United Nations sanctions against Iran for its continued defiance of demands to come clean about its nuclear program, U.S. officials said Friday.

As President Barack Obama's year-end deadline looms for Iran to comply with demands to prove its atomic activities are peaceful, the administration is reaching out to European allies, Russia and China to win support for new penalties at the U.N. Security Council after its membership changes Jan. 1, the officials said.