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Russia Damps down Expectations of Putin-Bush Summit
Russia played down expectations Wednesday that the weekend meeting in Slovenia between President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart George W. Bush might achieve any significant advances in relations between the two countries.
Russian diplomatic sources quoted by the Interfax news agency stressed that the meeting was to be short -- just over two hours, according to a Slovenian diplomat in Moscow -- and that no documents would be signed during the face-to-face session.
Saturday's encounter will be Bush's first with a Russian leader since he took office in January.
US-Russian relations have chilled considerably in the past four months, partly as a result of Bush's determination to press ahead with a missile defense scheme that would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
Contacted by AFP, the Russian foreign ministry refused to comment directly on the upcoming meeting.
Interfax quoted foreign ministry sources as saying that "no suprises should be expected" but that "predictability is what Russia wants in its relations with the United States."
On Bush's missile defense plans, the sources said "we have been hearing of Washington's resolve to develop a missile defence system, but we don't know what kind."
US officials "have not given direct answers to our questions so far. What we see is just the sack, as in the Russian expression 'to buy a cat in a sack,' but we're not sure whether it contains a cat, a snake, or nothing at all," they said.
While commentators have noted the wide divergence of views between Moscow and Washington on missile defense, some analysts have speculated that Putin could seek concessions from Bush on such issues as debt relief in return for tacit consent to the project.
Diplomatic sources quoted by Interfax said the two leaders would "discuss strategic stability and the development of bilateral relations in every field and exchange views on ways to to resolve the Middle East and Balkans conflicts," but were "not expected to offer any new initiatives."
Russia wants "constructive, stable and predictable relations with the United States," the sources said.
The ITAR-TASS news agency quoted "high-ranking experts involved in formulating Russia's policy towards the United States" as saying that the durability of Russian-US relations depended "largely on improving ... economic relations."
The experts "expect that as a result of the talks in Ljubljana the Russian and US presidents will issue a serious political signal to business circles to prompt them to increase economic cooperation between the two countries," the agency reported.
Foreign ministry officials quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency said the Ljubljana meeting would aim to "strengthen the positive tendencies in bilateral relations," starting from "the understanding that Washington and Moscow are no longer adversaries."
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