Russia signalled yesterday it might be willing to consider changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to accommodate US plans to build a national missile shield.
"The ABM treaty could be subject to modifications, and various changes have been made to it [in the past]," said Gen Leonid Ivashov, who heads the Russian defence ministry's department of international military co-operation.
The statement was particularly unexpected because it came from one of the defence ministry's well-known hawks noted for his denunciations of the West.
Gen Ivashov again criticised the proposed US missile defence system, saying it threatened to destroy not only the cornerstone but the whole architecture of global arms limitation accords which it had taken three decades to build.
"What the United States is proposing corresponds to a total breach of the treaty and to the destruction of strategic stability," he said.
However Moscow defence analysts reacted with amazement to Gen Ivashov's remarks, saying they represented a clear change of thinking from Russia's initially fierce opposition to the US missile shield project.
"If you compare this statement with earlier ones which followed the US announcement of the project, it represents a significant change of position on the part of the radical faction in the defence ministry," said Mr Yury Gladkevich, an expert at the AVN military news agency.
But Mr Gladkevich also noted that the more flexible Russian approach was couched in the same critical language as before.
However, Gen Ivashov noted in his remarks yesterday that Moscow would seek to do all in its power to preserve the ABM treaty as a cornerstone of arms reduction policy. "If the United States abandons the ABM agreement de facto, the Russian side will take measures in an attempt to get them to return to the treaty," he said.