US and Russia to begin talks on arms cuts

The 70-minute meeting, held at the residence of the US ambassador to Britain, produced a joint statement pledging cooperation on issues including Afghanistan, Iran's nuclear program, nuclear proliferation and reviving the global economy. It also noted that differences remain over US plans to deploy a missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe, Russia's war with Georgia last year, and NATO's planned expansion deeper into what Russia considers its traditional sphere of influence.

Speaking to reporters from a sitting area over looking the rolling lawn of Obama's guest house, Obama and Medvedev shunned the personal analysis that accompanied the 2001 meeting between then-presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, when the American leader said he was "able to get a sense of his soul." That initial meeting defined the Bush-Putin relationship for years, a period when US and Russian interests diverged sharply over security, energy, and human rights policy.

"What I believe we've begun today is a very constructive dialogue that will allow us to work on issues of mutual interest," Obama said after the private meeting, held on the eve of the G-20 economic meeting. He announced he would be traveling to Moscow in July for a summit.

Medvedev, a lawyer by training who is showing signs of trying to emerge from Putin's shadow, said, "I can only agree that relations between our countries have been adrift over the past years."

"There are far more points in which we can, where we can come closer, where we can work, rather on those points where we have differences," he said.

The Medvedev meeting was just one element of a day for the president that included talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chinese leader Hu Jintao about the global economic crisis. Obama said he would also visit China before the end of the year. The day ended with an elaborate dinner at 10 Downing Street for leaders of the G-20 countries, whose combined economies account for 85 percent of the world economy.

But the Medvedev talks were the most scrutinized moment of Obama's second day here, with observers eager to assess how a relative novice to international politics would work with a Russian government that in just the last year has cut off gas supplies to Europe in the middle of winter and waged war in Georgia to protect its interests.

"Both of these guys are wary of producing any new jokes about souls and eyes," said Stephen Sestanovich, the George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "They know the relationship has not been good, and if you look at the statement of what they want to work on, it's less warm than the Bush-Putin Sochi agreement of last year, which mentioned friendship, partnership, and human rights."

Officials from both countries described the meeting as businesslike.

"We are not being naive about this," a senior US official said. "When there's disagreement, we're going to honestly disagree. But we're going to try to avoid problems that come as a result of misunderstandings."

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, praised what he called a "new atmosphere of mutual trust . . . which does not create the illusion of good relations because they develop well on a personal level but which ensure taking into account mutual interests and readiness to listen to each other."

"We missed this much in the past years," Lavrov said.

"I think it was a meeting without much intimacy to it, which is a good thing," said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They know what's to be expected, what's to be done, and neither is trying to recruit the other guy. No one is trying to impress each other.

"One little phrase by President Bush reverberated much more than any other," he continued. "And that was unhelpful as far as the relationship is concerned."

In a separate joint statement, the two leaders pledged to begin work immediately on an agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires at the end of this year. They committed to reducing their nuclear arsenals to levels lower than those mandated by the Moscow Treaty of 2002, which calls for both nations to have between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by Dec. 31, 2012.

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement that the new agreement would have to be signed by early August for the Senate to ratify it this year. The deadline probably means that Obama and Medvedev would have to sign the treaty during their July summit in Moscow.

The statement also called for "international negotiations for a verifiable treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons," a step that has never been taken before.

Obama also pledged to work for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate rejected in 1999. Senate aides said yesterday that trying to bring the treaty to a vote would probably take time and predicted that it did not currently have the votes to pass.

The arms-reduction talks are designed to produce a treaty that contains stringent measures to verify warhead and missile levels, something that US officials said the two countries have not attempted since the START treaty almost 20 years ago. They dismissed more recent treaties negotiated by the Bush administration as "arms control lite" and said they would not hold what they called "drive-by summits."

Senior US officials said Obama made clear to Medvedev he would not recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway provinces of Georgia, as independent states. He also raised the case of Lev Ponomaryov, a 67-year-old human rights activist who was badly beaten earlier this week outside his Moscow apartment.

But the leaders pledged to cooperate on holding Iran to its disclosure commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The goal is to ensure that Iran is not using what its leaders say is a civilian nuclear-energy program to make nuclear weapons, something the United States and others believe is the case.

"It shouldn't be hard for them to ignore some issues that are not as a matter of simple realism going to be big obstacles to good relations," Sestanovich said. "The question is whether each side approaches this question in a stiff, exacting, lawyerly way that blocks progress."