Aerial view of the River Entrance of the Pentagon

The expert level talks follow up on a set of wide-ranging proposals for US-Russian missile defense cooperation made last month by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates during a visit to Moscow.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he had no details on the agenda of the talks. He said Eric Edelman, deputy secretary of state for policy, was representing the Defense Department at the meeting.

A Russian foreign ministry official was quoted on Friday as saying that the United States had put concrete proposals in writing but that they fell short of what Gates and Rice promised orally when they met with President Vladimir Putin.

"Now there is no more talk of joint assessment of threats, of Russian experts' presence at missile shield's sites, no readiness to keep the system non-operational if there is no actual missile threat -- everything is so washed out that it is hard to recognize the earlier proposals," Russian news agencies quoted a Russian foreign ministry official as saying.

On Thursday, however, Putin said that he had discussed the issue recently with US President George W. Bush and "it seems that our concerns are being listened to."