Russia's President-elect, Mr Vladimir Putin, said yesterday he was delighted the Duma had ratified the START-2 nuclear weapons reduction treaty and that now the arms control ball was firmly in Washington's court.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, and Russia's opposition Communists both declared the parliamentary lower house vote to be momentous. Ms Albright said it was an historic step forward, while the Communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, called it an historic blunder.
The vote - 288 for with 131 against and four abstentions - came seven years after the USRussian deal was struck and just two days before Mr Putin flies to London on a debut Western trip.
The voting was in open session but the debate took place in secret. Under START-2, the US and Russia agree to cut the number of nuclear warheads from 6,000 to no more than 3,500 on each side by 2007. The US Senate ratified the treaty in 1996.
"This vote is indeed an historic step which will help improve security for all of us," Ms Albright said in a statement released during a visit to Ukraine.
"We look forward to intensifying our discussion on next steps of our arms control dialogue and other issues when [the Russian] Foreign Minister, [Mr Igor] Ivanov, comes to Washington later this month."
In Brussels, the NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, said the vote removed an arms control logjam and was a possible sign Mr Putin would be able to work with the Duma.
By ratifying the 1993 treaty as Mr Putin asked them, Duma deputies handed him a strategic and symbolic prize for his visit to London tomorrow, his first to the West since he took over from Mr Boris Yeltsin on December 31st.
Mr Yeltsin tried and failed for six years to push the treaty through the old Communist-led Duma.
Almost all the deputies in the 450-seat chamber were present when Mr Putin strode into the building shadowed by a security detail that including plainclothes and naval officers carrying communications equipment with his nuclear launch codes.
"Our nuclear forces, after the ratification of START-2, will still be able at any moment and any point on the planet to destroy any enemy several times over and guaranteed," he told deputies in a speech which officials broadcast.
"We don't need an arms race," he said. "We faced one before and if we allow it again it will be worse than last time."
He told reporters the treaty would allow Moscow to modernise its nuclear shield and divert scarce funds to conventional arms.
Meanwhile, ITAR-TASS news agency has reported that Russian secret agents have arrested a senior aide to President Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya in a special operation in the war-torn republic.
Gen Apti Batalov, considered to be one of Mr Maskhadov's most loyal supporters, was captured by a special group of the FSB in the Shalinsky region of Chechnya, the news agency reported, citing an FSB spokesman, Mr Alexander Zdanovich.
Gen Batalov was brought to Moscow early yesterday and is being held in solitary confinement in the city's Lefortovo prison. Gen Batalov played an active role in the 1994-96 Chechen war and in December 1996 was appointed by Mr Maskhadov head of the Chechen armed formations, according to ITAR-TASS. In July 1997, Gen Batalov was appointed head of the rebel republic's national security service and in 1998 was made head of Mr Maskhadov's presidential administration.