US President Barack Obama touted an “excellent opportunity” for the United States and Russia to kick-start relations that have frayed in recent years, after a meeting on May 7 with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“I think we have an excellent opportunity to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia on a whole host of issues,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) quoted Obama as saying, as the two countries work to improve ties that last year reached one of their lowest points since the Cold War.

Topping the list of priorities are talks toward a new nuclear disarmament treaty, which Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev agreed to launch during a summit last month in London.

Lavrov and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier on May 7 insisted the arms-control talks would not be derailed by disagreements over other international issues, including the situation in Georgia and the Iran nuclear programme. A deal to cut the two countries’ massive weapons arsenals “is too important ... to make it hostage of any particular regime anywhere around the globe,” Lavrov said at a press conference with Clinton.

The latest US-Russian rapprochement comes even as relations between Moscow and the wider NATO alliance have reached a new low. Moscow on May 6 expelled two NATO diplomats in an apparent tit-for-tat move while reiterating its protests at NATO military exercises in Georgia. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it had withdrawn the accreditation of two diplomats at the NATO Information Office in Moscow. The decision was confirmed and criticized by NATO officials in Brussels, who also specified that both diplomats are Canadian nationals.

“The Russian measure is very unfortunate and counterproductive to our efforts to restore our dialogue and cooperation with Russia. Thus NATO very much regrets the Russian action and does not consider there to be any justification for it,” NATO said in a statement.

The move on May 6 followed NATO’s decision two weeks ago to expel two Russian diplomats from the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels in connection with a spying scandal. It came on the same day that NATO began a series of military manoeuvres in Georgia, a country that Russia partially invaded last August.

Russia again criticised the exercises on May 6, labelling them a provocation. NATO spokesman James Appathurai told Russia’s Echo Moskvi radio station that the manoeuvres had been planned long before Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August. The exercises form part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, with around 200 participants from more than a dozen countries taking up position Wednesday morning at a military base near the capital Tbilisi, media reports quoted the Georgian Defence Ministry as saying.

The exercises, which are due to start officially on May 11, have already prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to cancel his participation at a meeting with NATO foreign ministers due to take place in Brussels on May 18-19. The meeting was meant to be the first of its kind since the war in Georgia. Meanwhile, the Georgian government said on May 5 it had thwarted an attempted coup supported by Russia. The plan reportedly involved a mutiny at a tank unit. Dozens were arrested after the revolt was put down.