Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia was willing to abandon nuclear weapons if the United States and all other countries that have them do the same.

"If those who made the atomic bomb and used it are ready to abandon it like, I hope, other nuclear powers officially and unofficially owning them, of course we will welcome and facilitate this process in all ways," Putin said, RIA-Novosti reported.

Putin spoke at a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said earlier that the idea of scrapping nuclear arms altogether rather than limiting their proliferation was a real prospect.

In a joint declaration on April 1, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev ordered negotiators to start work on a new treaty reducing their nuclear stockpiles as a first step toward "a nuclear-weapon-free world."

Meanwhile, Nikolai Solovtsov, the chief of the military's Strategic Missile Forces, said Wednesday that the new treaty must not cut the number of nuclear warheads below 1,500 each.

As it stands now, the United States has about 5,500 nuclear warheads; Russia has about 3,900.

Russia has linked the treaty to U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Central Europe, which it opposes.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that prospects for reaching common ground on missile defense have improved slightly as Moscow grows more concerned about Iran.