Washington - The United States and Russia are to meet in mid-November in Geneva to discuss an extension of a key Cold War arms control treaty that expires next year, the US State Department said.

The announcement Friday came after Moscow had criticized Washington for shrugging off the nuclear arms control regime set at the end of the Cold War.

The State Department said the two countries have already held "extensive discussions" on a post-START agreement. START, or the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, was signed in 1991 and set limits on the US and Soviet nuclear arsenals. It expires in December 2009.

Next month's talks would take place amid heightened tensions between Russia and the United States after Russia's invasion of US ally Georgia in August and US plans to locate parts of a missile defence shield in the former Eastern Bloc countries of Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States of failing to seek a replacement for the START treaty in a newspaper interview this month.

"I think this would be a most dangerous path," he said.