Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Moscow, Dec. 12 (Interfax) - A U.S. Congress delegation led by Sen. Richard Lugar is due to visit Moscow on Dec. 16-20, the U.S. Embassy in Russia said on Thursday.

Lugar, who is a Republican, is a co-author of the Nunn-Lugar program, under which the United States helps Russia destroy strategic weapons.

After Barack Obama's victory in last month's U.S. presidential election, some American media stories named Lugar, who is aged 76 and has in the past been chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as one of the likeliest politicians to become secretary of state in Obama's administration.

In August 2005, Lugar and Obama, who was then a senator, were held for three hours at an airport in the Russian city of Perm after coming to Russia to inspect a mobile launch missile dismantling facility.

Sources said then that Russian border guards had decided to inspect the senators' airliner.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow told Interfax that month that the cause of the incident had been a misunderstanding concerning the status of the senators' flight. The Russian authorities released the aircraft when the diplomatic status of the flight was confirmed to them and let the plane proceed to Kyiv, the spokesman said.

At that time Lugar headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.