Bush, Putin at odds near end of terms
Foreign Desk Report

ZAGREB—President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, short-time leaders in a period of rising tension, tried to stress cooperation Friday as they headed toward the final face-to-face diplomacy of their presidencies. Both declared there is no Cold War, but conflicts over security remained.
Finished with the NATO summit in Bucharest, Bush shifted to Croatia for an overnight stay and meetings on Saturday before heading to Russia to see Putin. In all, the two leaders were to meet three times in three days, capping a relationship that has lasted nearly a decade.
Putin is leaving office next month; Bush’s term ends in January. Bush and Putin have been at odds over NATO’s expanding membership and a U.S.-based missile defense plan in Europe. Yet in a meeting with leaders on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Romania, Putin shrugged off allegations that the world is sliding toward a new East-West divide. The Russian leader told reporters that his message to Bush and other leaders was “Let’s be friends, guys, and engage in an honest dialogue.”
Bush said he and Putin were “two old warhorses” who were getting ready to step down, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting. Bush emphasized the need for cooperation and said Russia is not the enemy, the official said. Bush found Putin’s tone to be constructive and matter-of-fact, the official said. To reporters, Putin appeared to question the purpose of NATO in the post-Soviet Union era, even as he stressed Russia’s willingness to cooperate with the alliance if its concerns are heard among its leaders.
“The efficiency of our cooperation will depend on whether NATO members take Russia’s interests into account,” he said.
He strongly criticized expansion plans supported by Bush and many other NATO members that would include in the military alliance former Soviet republics. Ukraine and Georgia were not allowed at this meeting to start on the path to membership, but leaders made clear they would be eventually and that prospect angers Moscow.
“The emergence of the powerful military bloc at our borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russia’s security,” Putin said. “I heard them saying today that the expansion is not directed against Russia. But it’s the potential, not intentions that matters.” Meanwhile, in Croatia, the government sees Bush’s visit as a clear sign that the country — detested by Washington and other Western governments in the 1990s because of its nationalism — is now embraced by the West.
President Stipe Mesic called the visit a privilege, and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader described it as an honor. However, protests were planned against U.S. policies on Iraq, greenhouse gas emissions and U.S. treatment of terror suspects.
The protests will be held at two downtown squares in Zagreb, but Bush will not see or hear them — they are away from the tightly secured venues of his meetings with government officials.
Bush’s meeting at Putin’s vacation home, at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Saturday and Sunday, is expected to be their last as presidents.
Yet under Russia’s new power-sharing agreement, Putin’s hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, will be sworn in as president on May 7 — and Putin, his stern mentor and predecessor, will serve under him as prime minister. In recent years, Putin has moved to consolidate his power and control of Russia.
Bush goes into the meetings having won NATO backing to install a missile shield in the former Soviet eastern European satellites of Poland and the Czech Republic over Russian objections. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it a “breakthrough agreement” for the military alliance, and it was sugarcoated by the announcement of a U.S. deal with the Czech Republic to host a radar site vital to the missile defense system.
But Bush lost, at least for the moment, a highly public spat over opening the door to NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia, which Putin vehemently opposes. Instead of the immediate start to that process that he wanted, Bush got a written commitment from the allies, including Germany and France, which shared Russian concerns, that the two nations will become NATO members at some point. Bush plans to continue to press the matter.