The US Vice-President, Mr Al Gore, and the Russian Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Stepashin, last night announced that negotiators from both countries would begin arms reductions negotiations on START III and ABM treaties next month in Moscow.
"We are expecting some very serious work on these issues when the teams meet in August," Mr Stepashin said through an interpreter in a joint press conference with Mr Gore after talks in Washington.
However, Mr Gore played down expectations for swift progress on the pacts, noting the recent strains with Moscow following the US-led NATO strikes against Serbia over Kosovo.
Mr Stepashin was in Washington on his first official visit to attend regular US-Russia commission talks on economic and scientific co-operation. There were hopes of mending bilateral ties strained by the Kosovo crisis and to boost trade and investment with Russia's struggling economy.
"Kosovo was unmistakably a severe test of the relationship," according to Mr Leon Fuerth, an adviser to Mr Gore.
Russia opposed the NATO-led strikes to end military action in Kosovo by Yugoslavia and it rejects the US decision to exclude Serbia from US aid as long as President Slobodan Milosevic is in power.
That issue will be to the fore when Mr Clinton travels to Sarajevo on Friday for a summit on the reconstruction of the Balkans.
Mr Stepashin's predecessor, Mr Gennady Primakov, was on his way to Washington when he turned his jet around and flew back to Moscow in March as a protest against the NATO bombing.
However, Mr Fuerth told reporters ahead of the talks that the meeting was an indication of the determination on both sides "to move towards normalcy".
He congratulated Russia for its "conduct of diplomacy under very difficult circumstances" during the NATO air campaign.
Mr Stepashin is hoping that the International Monetary Fund will approve a $4.5 billion loan today as the highlight of the visit.
The Prime Minister, who is hoping that his visit here will encourage US investment to boost the weakened Russian economy, has given reassurances that the country will never relapse back to a communist system.
At a dinner for about 400 US businessmen, members of Congress and government officials, he said: "As a former chief of counter-intelligence, I can tell you communism will never win and we will never go back. The healthy forces won't let it happen."
He promised that there would be "no more political and military upheavals - nothing will take us back to the Cold War".
As an indication that relations were being restored to the pre-Kosovo situation, the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Al bright, agreed with Mr Ivanov at a meeting in Singapore earlier this week to set up an additional "hot line" between Moscow and Washington to deal with emergencies.
Concerning the IMF loan, although Mr Stepashin indicated in Moscow before leaving for the US that the decision "has been taken", a White House official has been quoted as saying that the US was still "unsure" whether to support it.
The conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, has expressed opposition, pointing out that Russia has still not properly reformed its tax, banking and legal systems.
Mr Stepashin said in Washington, however, that his government wanted to provide "a serious legal framework, protection of investors based on the law and a new stage of privatisations".
Russia's Foreign intelligence service (SVR)said yesterday the US spent more time spying on Moscow than Moscow did on Washington. The SVR was responding to a report in the Washington Newspaper that Washington had asked Russia to reduce the number of spies in the US.