Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, flanked by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told reporters that both sides had made "steady progress" on work to combat nuclear terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

"We also discussed some contentious issues where we haven't reached agreement as of now," Lavrov said after two days of talks that also involved US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov.

"I'm talking primarily about missile defence and about the strategic arms reduction regime," Lavrov said in a four-way press conference where all the participants grew stern at each mention of missile defence.

But Lavrov left the door open a crack when he promised to await written US answers to Russian concerns over the plan for a missile defence network based in former Soviet satellite states Poland and the Czech Republic.

Lavrov and his US guests also sought to make a clean break with similar two-plus-two talks that ended bitterly here last October.

"What happened in October happened in October. We discussed all that and that's it with it. It's March and it's a more optimistic month," Lavrov said.

In October, President Vladimir Putin was shown on national television berating the two US officials over the missile plan and tensions between the two countries spiked.

During last year's talks, Rice and Gates said they had made proposals -- including allowing Russian access to the missile defence sites -- that were designed to neutralise Moscow's concerns over the system.

Russia claims the US missile defence plan threatens Russian security. The United States says it is aimed only at countering perceived ballistic missile threats from unfriendly states like Iran and North Korea.

After the October meeting, Russia asserted that the proposals made orally by Rice and Gates were nowhere to be seen when Moscow received the written US summary of those talks.

Rice on Tuesday put the October acrimony down to a miscommunication, saying: "Perhaps when one moves from a conceptual level to one in detail, sometimes things get lost in translation."

Whatever the truth, officials from both countries went out of their way Tuesday to emphasise that the US offers made during this round of talks would be confirmed in writing by the end of the day.

And Rice, smiling at times as she stressed the "very good discussions" she and Gates had with Lavrov and Serdyukov, said the two countries had worked out a new "strategic framework" to govern future US-Russian ties.

US officials told journalists later that the framework would serve as a guide as President Vladimir Putin hands over to President-elect Dmitry Medvedev in May and as the United States holds presidential elections in November.

Rice said the two sides had agreed essentially that the framework would include areas on which both sides have already agreed, areas they are developing, and more difficult topics like missile defence and arms reduction.

Lavrov said the two sides had also still not reached any agreement on how to proceed after the expiration of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty at the end of 2009.

He did assert however that the two countries had decided that any START follow-on agreement should be legally binding for both sides -- a notion for which Washington had previously shown little enthusiasm.

Senior US officials said on condition of anonymity that it was progress for the Russians to accept including both the difficult and easier issues in the strategic framework.

The officials also said the Russians recognised that they had little choice but to work with the Americans on missile defence because Washington was both determined to carry it out and enjoyed growing European support for it.

"No-one on either side expected dramatic breakthroughs, but we're pleased with the progress," one official said.

Several analysts blamed past tension in the relationship over Russian perceptions that the United States, after having won the Cold War, was riding roughshod over them by refusing any compromise on many issues.

But Gates stressed that Washington was going the extra mile to meet Russian concerns, both by giving them lengthy written responses and returning to Russia even though it was the Russians' turn to travel to Washington for the talks.

"We've leaned very far forward in this in an effort to provide reassurance" to Russia, Gates said.

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