MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday discussed their upcoming summit, trade issues and cooperation in international affairs including the regulation of regional conflicts, the Kremlin press service said.
"Both sides expressed their satisfaction with the process of coming to agreement on the basic documents that are planned for signing at the summit level," the press service said.
Negotiators from the two countries have been working feverishly in the run-up to the May 23-26 meeting in Moscow and St. Petersburg to hammer out an agreement to reduce U.S. and Russian arsenals of long-range warheads to 1,700 to 2,200 each within 10 years. The United States now has 6,000 to 7,000 warheads, Russia about 6,000.
A senior U.S. diplomat in Moscow said Tuesday that he expected the agreement would be ready for signing by the summit, though there are "some details to be worked out."
One outstanding disagreement is whether the warheads that are taken out of service are destroyed, as Moscow insists, or stored, as Washington wants. But the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that there should be sufficient transparency to avoid the unpredictable changes that Moscow says it fears.
Talks beyond the summit might lead to agreements on a new mechanism for exchanging information on strategic force levels on a continual basis, which would increase transparency even more, the diplomat said.
The summit is also expected to produce a political statement on the U.S.-Russian strategic agenda, touching on missile defense, nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, countering terrorism, and the need to have a firm economic underpinning to the bilateral relationship. Separate statements are expected on energy cooperation, the war against terrorism and possibly the Middle East, the diplomat said.
In their telephone conversation, Putin and Bush affirmed their commitment to solving all trade and economic problems "through constructive negotiations," the Kremlin press service said.
Last week, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, warned that Russia's monthlong ban on U.S. poultry imports earlier this year and its sluggish resumption of import licensing had hurt Moscow's chances to have the Jackson-Vanik amendment lifted in time for the summit. Russia is also hoping that the U.S. government will declare it a market economy by the time the two presidents meet.
Meanwhile, Russian legislator Alexei Arbatov on Tuesday accused the United States of trying to add Cuba, Syria and Libya to the "axis of evil."
He was responding to U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton's allegation Monday that Cuba was trying to develop biological weapons and transferring its technical expertise to countries hostile to the United States. Bolton did not identify the countries but noted that last year Cuban leader Fidel Castro had visited Iran, Syria and Libya - which, together with Cuba, are all on the State Department's list of terrorism sponsors.
Arbatov said Washington should share its information with the United Nations' Security Council, the Interfax news agency reported.
"Russia might respond by pointing to similar threats from other countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey," Arbatov was quoted as saying.