Because the two countries have already held extensive food aid discussions over the past two weeks, "I would hope that negotiation of the actual agreements will not be onerous," Goldthwait told Reuters.

"We may simply be able to write a draft and provide it to them" for their signature, Goldthwait said, outlining the smoothest possible scenario.

If process proves to be more difficult and discussions get bogged down over details, "we would probably have to invite them to come here" to finish crafting the pacts, he said.

As of now, the United States still expects the agreements can be completed in time for food aid shipments to begin in December, Goldthwait said.

The United States and Russia reached a broad understanding last week on policy details surrounding the US Food aid, but threeseparate food aid agreements still have to be negotiated before shipments can begin.

One agreement would cover a donation of 1.5 million tonnes of wheat under a recent Clinton administration initiative to reduce surplus domestic wheat stocks.

The second agreement would cover concessional sales of 1.5 million tonnes of grains, meat and dry powdered milk under title I of the US PL-480 food aid programme.

The third would cover the donation of 100,000 tonnes of food for distribution in Russia by private voluntary groups.

Commodity traders have been keenly interested in the class of wheat to be provided in the large donation, as well as the cuts of pork and beef that will be sold under the title I.

However, Goldthwait said those details still need to be worked out. In general, Russian officials said they would prefer food wheat over feed wheat and asked for meat products that could be further processed, but the talks did not get more specific than that, he said.

Ron Croushorn, an USDA export programmespecialist who was part of Goldthwait's negotiating team in Moscow, said USDA was working as "swiftly" as it could on the food aid agreements.

But even so, it would take a "moderate amount of time" to finish the three agreements, he said.

Croushorn also said that the discussions in Moscow last week were too general to provide any specifics on the cuts of meat or the class of wheat that might be included in the food aid pacts.