COPENHAGEN: A senior U.S. official says President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev will meet today(Friday) to discuss efforts to reach a new arms control treaty.

The two will meet on the sidelines of the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

The U.S. State Department said the two sides were getting close to a deal.

Earlier, a US newspaper claimed that United States and Russia are close to a breakthrough on a new treaty to cut their arsenals of nuclear weapons and the missiles, submarines and bombers that would be used to launch them, according to officials and analysts.

Barack Obama and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, could sign the agreement to replace the existing strategic arms reduction treaty (Start) – the cornerstone in US-Russian relations for almost two decades.

The two countries, which have been engaged in negotiations in Geneva for months, have already missed a 5 December deadline, the day the existing treaty expired.

The new treaty would allow Obama to end the year with a much-needed foreign policy success, one that would contribute to improving US-Russian relations.