Obama, Medvedev set for summit in Russia

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev will end a seven-year hiatus in U.S.-Russian summitry on Monday, with each declaring his determination to cut nuclear arsenals further and repair a badly damaged relationship.

Both sides appear to want to use progress on arms control as a pathway to possible agreement on trickier issues, including Iran and Georgia, the tiny former Soviet republic.

Those difficulties and others have soured a promising linkage in the first years after the Cold War and pushed ties between Moscow and Washington to depths unseen in more than two decades.

Obama, his wife, Michelle Obama, and daughters Malia and Sasha left Andrews Air Force Base aboard Air Force One for Moscow on Sunday evening.

In advance of Obama's departure, a White House official told reporters the presidents expect to announce progress on negotiations that could lead to a treaty to replace the START I agreement, which expires Dec. 5.

More broadly, the U.S. wants to use the summit to overhaul the U.S.-Russian relationship.

Looking for co-operation

"It's not, in our view, a zero-sum game, that if it's two points for Russia it's negative two for us, but there are ways that we can co-operate to advance our interests and, at the same time, do things with the Russians that are good for them as well," Obama's top assistant on Russia, Michael McFaul, said in a pre-summit briefing.

Medvedev said in an internet address that the two powers "need new, common, mutually beneficial projects in business, science and culture. He added, "I hope that this sincere desire to open a new chapter in Russian-American co-operation will be brought into fruition."

Two things appear certain:

• The Russians have said they will agree to allow the U.S. to use their territory and air space to move munitions and arms to U.S. and NATO forces fighting Taliban Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. The Kremlin announced the deal days before the summit as a sweetener for Obama.
• A directive for negotiators to work toward a START I replacement. Both sides have agreed in principle to cut warheads from more than 2,000 each to as low as 1,500 apiece.   

Those deals could be announced at an Obama-Medvedev news conference Monday afternoon after the leaders' scheduled four-hour meeting.

There has been an apparent hardening on both sides over a proposed U.S. missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. Those differences could stall or preclude an agreement of strategic nuclear warheads.

That could kill the hoped-for extension of those talks next year to include cuts in delivery vehicles: long-range missiles, submarines and bombers.

Clarification sought

On Friday, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister and former president, said the Kremlin would not negotiate a replacement to START I unless Obama clarified plans for the defence system to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The U.S. contends it's designed to protect U.S. allies in Europe from a potential nuclear attack by Iran.

The Russians see it as a way of weakening their offensive nuclear strike potential, which is arrayed against the U.S. arsenal. Obama has been cool to the program, which former president George W. Bush pushed hard.

Obama's schedule includes an hour-long meeting with Putin on Tuesday, though protocol didn't require him to visit the prime minister.

Putin's power recognized

"Prime Minister Putin still has a lot of sway in Russia, and I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev, that Putin understands that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations [are] outdated, that it's time to move forward in a different direction," Obama said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press.

Most analysts see Putin as still holding the reins of power in Russia.

Obama said in the interview, "I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."

Putin responded quickly. "We don't know how to stand so awkwardly with our legs apart," he said in televised remarks. "We stand solidly on our own two feet and always look into the future."

One of the most difficult issues expected in the Putin meeting is his anger at neighbouring Georgia. Last August, he sent soldiers, tanks and warplanes to crush the Georgian military after Georgia's leader sought to retake a breakaway region that wants to reunite with Russia.

Putin appears dead set on re-establishing Russia's power and sphere of influence in former Soviet republics. At the same time, NATO has expanded east to include some of those countries.