Russia-USA summit: Serious conversation is on the way

Negotiations between Russian and American presidents are going on in the Kremlin. RIA Novosti informed that Putin and Bush were talking 30 minutes longer, than was actually planned. Russia is represented by Prime Minister Kasyanov, Secretary of the Security Council Rushaylo (he talked to Putin, Bush and Condoleezza Rice), foreign and defense ministers, deputy chairman of the presidential administration Prikhodko, Atomic Minister Rumyantsev, Energy Minister Yusufov, Rosaviakosmos’ head Koptev, and other high-ranking Russian officials. The USA is represented by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Evans, John Bolton, and Andrew Card.

The beginning of extended negotiations was marked with signing of the treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive potentials. Furthermore, there were declarations signed on the new economic relations, the new energetic dialogue, on anti-terrorist cooperation, and the situation in the Middle East.

The presidents also signed the joint declaration on the new strategic relations between Russia and the USA. Both countries acknowledged that the current situation in the field of security is fundamentally different from the Cold War era. In this connection the parties decided to carry out the measures that were aimed at strengthening the mutual trust and expanding the transparency in the field of the anti-missile defense. This includes informational exchange regarding anti-missile programs, tests in this field, observations and so on.

Russia and America are also going to take some measures for the sake of the joint center for data exchange to start functioning. All those documents have already been elaborated before by the experts of the two countries, so there was nothing surprising to be expected here.

After all those documents are signed, the presidents will inevitably touch upon the moot questions in the relations between Russia and America. George Bush is very likely to talk about the issue of Russia-Iran cooperation in the field of the mass destruction weapon. A spokesman for the American State Department said that Washington had the information pertaining to the facts of such cooperation. Bush is intended to have the impartial conversation with Putin on this subject. However, Americans are not going to inform Russians on the details of their materials. The exact list of America's claims is not known, but one may say for sure that the conversation will be a hard one for Putin. Negotiations are getting started, let’s see, what is going to be next.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov