MOSCOW, July 18 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has proposed to the United States that the sides draft a simpler version of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a senior Defense Ministry official said Wednesday.

The current START treaty expires December 5, 2009. "In our opinion, we should not allow a vacuum in the sphere of strategic arms control," Lieutenant General Yevgeny Buzhinsky said.

"So far, the U.S. has not responded."

The START I treaty was signed July 31, 1991, five months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and expires December 5, 2009.

It remains in force as a treaty between the U.S. and Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have since totally disarmed their strategic arms capabilities, and the U.S. and Russia reduced the number of delivery vehicles to 1,600, with no more than 6,000 warheads.

The treaty was followed by START II, which banned the use of multiple re-entry vehicles (MIRV) but never entered into force and was later bypassed by the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT), signed by Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in Moscow May 24, 2002.

Buzhinsky also said: "The new treaty should envision restrictions on the deployment of strategic offensive forces only on the state's national territory," adding that the mechanism of control over those armaments and information exchanges should be fixed in the treaty, or otherwise it loses its rationale.

Russia and the U.S. earlier confirmed plans to reduce their strategic arms to a minimum possible level and to develop new agreements on START.

Russia's foreign minister and the U.S. secretary of state said in a statement in June that Russia and the U.S. have confirmed their intention to reduce their strategic offensive arms to a minimal level and to develop relevant agreements.

"Russia and the United States state again their intention to continue with the reduction of strategic offensive weapons down to the lowest possible level, which would guarantee national security and alliance obligations," Sergei Lavrov and Condoleezza Rice said in the joint statement, which summarized the results of the summit in Kennebunkport, the U.S.

Buzhinsky also said Russia had welcomed interested countries, including the U.S., to use a radar being built in the southern Russian city of Armavir to monitor Iran's missile activities.

"We proposed to the U.S. -- let us use radars in Gabala [in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan] and Armavir to monitor the missile programs of Iran and other countries. As soon as we track [Iran's] first test launch, we will have at least five years to get prepared to repel this threat - get prepared together," the general told journalists.

At the same time, he said that according to his data, there will be no missile threat from Iran in the next 15-20 years, as Iran is incapable of creating even missiles with a range of 5-6,000 kilometers (3-4,000 miles).