US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet Friday at a summit in Moscow to sign a historic treaty cutting nuclear arsenals and shaping a 21st-century partnership for the two countries.
Bush arrived late Thursday in the Russian capital amid high security for the Kremlin summit due to showcase the inking of a deal reducing each side's number of warheads by two thirds to between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade.
The fifth meeting between Bush and Putin on Friday will also see the two leaders clinch a new strategic partnership accord effectively drawing a line under the mutual suspicion and nuclear rivalry of the Cold War era.
However, even as they toast the new treaty and partnership accord, Bush and Putin were expected to grapple with a number of issues that pose a tough test of the evolving US-Russian relationship.
Moscow is eager to secure Russia's entry into the World Trade Organisation, and to attract greater US investment in its economy as well as cooperation with the United States in exporting Caspian Sea oil.
Putin is also expected to press the US president for assurances that an agreement 10 days ago to give Russia an unprecedented voice within NATO is only the first step in Moscow's integration within the Alliance.
At the same time Bush is likely to seek guarantees on the control of Russian nuclear technolog.
Media coverage of the Bush-Putin summit is expected to focus on disarmament, the fight against terrorism in the wake of September 11 and strategic security, but Putin hopes the summit will also have a tangible economic payoff.
The Kremlin boss is looking for Bush to help Russia gain the status of a free-market economy entitling it to US trade benefits a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union.
"The United States is a key partner for (Russian) investments and trade agreements. The economy will be a key topic" at the summit, Putin told a meeting of top entrepreneurs on the eve of the summit.
Discussion of Russia's hoped-for market economy status would be "an important item on the agenda," Putin added.
But Moscow was bracing itself for a likely disappointment that Bush would make no promises of action to lift a Soviet-era amendment barring Washington from delivering favourable US trade tariffs to its Cold War-era foe.
Moves in the US Congress to "graduate" Russia from the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a 1974 law penalising Moscow for its restrictions on the movement of Soviet Jews, have stalled amid a bitter dispute over US poultry exports.
The US Senate, while supporting granting Russia permanent normal trade relations, said Thursday it would only lift the amendment strengthening US-Russia relations "at the appropriate time."
Putin lamented the decision, saying: "The Congress has postponed examining the Jackson Vanik agreement. This is a strange decision."
Nevertheless the Kremlin has sought to portray Bush's visit as a reminder of how Putin has managed to turn it into a trustworthy partner for the West.
But some Russian nationalist supporters have already attacked the disarmament treaty as a humiliation for Moscow that would leave Washington with a massive advantage in nuclear and other defense potential.
Putin is trying to turn Russia "into a US satellite," said Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov as 250 of his supporters picketed the US embassy compound, some holding signs that read "The Destruction of Our Defence."
But the Russian army took a friendlier approach, with the official defense ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda running a cozy interview with the US president under the headline: "George Bush: We are no longer enemies."
And even firebrand nationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who only years ago spoke of expanding the Russian empire from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, said he was "very optimistic" about the Bush summit.
"I had criticized a policy of sucking up to Washington in the past but since September 11, they have themselves sought to cooperate with us. Why should we push them away?"
(China Daily May 24, 2002)
