Russia-US summit a chance to jumpstart ties

MOSCOW — Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev will likely sign a stack of agreements during their Moscow summit, but their chief goal may be for the United States and Russia to stop acting like adversaries — even if they can't be friends.

Over the past year, already tense ties have been strained to the breaking point over Russia's war with Georgia and U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield in Moscow's backyard.

With the first full-fledged U.S-Russia summit since 2002, the two presidents have a chance to put an end to years of suspicion and rancor.

"This will be a very important meeting which will basically answer the question of whether the U.S. and Russia can work together," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center, a think tank.

There's a packed agenda: Extension and expansion of the START 1 nuclear arms control treaty, Iran, North Korea, a proposed U.S. defensive missile system for Europe and Russia's disputed claims of having a privileged interest in the affairs of its former Soviet satellites.

Experts expect the two sides to agree on over flights of U.S. weaponry to Afghanistan, to pledge to agree to cuts in nuclear arsenals, and to set up a new presidential-level commission to expand cultural and trade programs.

The two-day summit isn't likely to have the impact of the 1945 Yalta conference, which preceded the division of Europe and led to the creation of the United Nations.

Neither is it expected to produce the fireworks of, say, the 1959 "Kitchen debate," when Vice President Richard Nixon came to Moscow and clashed over the relative advantages of communism and capitalism with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

But analysts still see the meeting as crucial to smooth relations between the two countries that control nine out of ten of the world's nuclear warheads.

First summits count. When U.S. President George W. Bush first met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia in June 2001, Bush looked Putin in the eye and liked what he saw.

"I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue," Bush said at the time. "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

But after a brief post-Sept. 11 honeymoon, the U.S.-Russia relationship suffered a long and bitter break-up.

Trenin and other experts say the planned summit has already achieved one of the White House's chief objectives: to end the hostile rhetoric between Washington and Moscow.