KIEV, March 16 – Ukraine suggested hosting a summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as the two have apparently started planning a ceremony for signing a historic nuclear arms reduction treaty.

Following a phone conversation between Obama and Medvedev on Saturday, the Kremlin announced the two sides were ready to plan the signing ceremony for a treaty that reduces the nuclear arsenal of both countries by one quarter.

Foreign Minister Kostiantyn Hryshchenko traveled to Moscow on Tuesday for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, and suggested holding the summit in Kiev, which got rid of the world’s third-biggest nuclear arsenal after it became independent from the Soviet Union.

Laavrov responded that holding the summit in Kiev would be “comfortable,” but said it was up to Medvedev and Obama to decide on “time and place” depending on their schedules, according to Interfax.

Lavrov may raise the issue at a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who is expected to visit Moscow on March 18 to finalize details of the agreement.

Hryshchenko said signing the agreement in Kiev would send a powerful non-proliferation message, underscoring the fact that Ukraine has voluntarily gotten rid of the nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We believe that the fact of signing the agreement in Kiev could become an important signal for those countries that are at crossroad, and will help the non-proliferation regime,” Hryshchenko said after the meeting with Lavrov.

Hosting the summit in Kiev would also help boost the international image of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was inaugurated last month. His image was shattered in 2004 when he tried – but failed – to steal the presidential election from then opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.

This time the election was deemed by international observers as fair, and Obama was one of the first international leaders to call and congratulate Yanukovych last month.

“I think this is a very interesting idea,” Hanna Herman, a deputy chief of staff at the Yanukovych administration, told Kommersant. “The Russian party received it with interest. If the Americans are not against it, Ukraine would at last become the bridge between the East and the West that our leader has always spoken about.”

The U.S. and Russia have been holding talks for almost a year to replace the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, or Start. The treaty expired in December 2009.

The U.S. and Russia have been now seeking to sign the new treatybefore Obama and Medvedev join other world leaders at a summit on nuclear non-proliferation in Washington that is scheduled in April.

The new treaty, if it is signed and ratified by the Senate and the Russian Parliament, would require each side to reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads to roughly 1,600, down from 2,200, according to The New York Times. It would also force each side to reduce its strategic bombers and land- and sea-based missiles to below 800, down from the old limit of 1,600, the newspaper said. (tl/ez)