MOSCOW (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton on Monday discussed preparations for a nuclear security summit and exchanged views over a new arms treaty in a telephone conversation, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

The top diplomats discussed preparations for an international nuclear security summit scheduled for April in Washington and negotiations on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1), the ministry said in a statement on its website.
Russia and the United States resumed talks last week on a replacement for the START-1 that expired on Dec. 5, last year. A Kremlin aide said last Wednesday that the two countries could hammer out a new arms reduction pact in March or April.
Signing the new arms treaty is widely seen as a breakthrough for Moscow and Washington to reset ties, which in the final days of the Bush administration plunged to an unprecedented post-Cold War low.