Kennebunkport, Maine – Relations are rocky between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but their meeting Sunday began with smiles, and flowers and kisses from Putin for the first lady and Bush’s mother.
Bush waited at his family’s seacoast estate as his father, former President George H.W. Bush, met Putin at an airport and rode with the Russian in a helicopter to the compound.
Emerging from a limousine, Putin handed flowers to first lady Laura Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush, then kissed them on both cheeks.
Putin’s wife did not make the trip.
“It’s pretty casual up here – unstructured,” Bush said about the setting for the pair’s talks.
Bush wants to convince Putin that a U.S. missile-defense system in Eastern Europe would not threaten Russia, and to get the Kremlin behind tough new penalties aimed at Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
What the Russian president seeks from the talks is less clear.
Putin requested an audience with Bush before going to Guatemala, where Olympic officials are picking a host city for the 2014 Winter Games. But Bush aides braced for the possibility of a surprise from Putin.
“Does Putin have something he plans to throw at Bush’s feet?” wondered Sarah Mendelson, Russia policy expert and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Both sides insisted there was no set agenda and scant potential for announcements. With expectations lowered and an itinerary that amounts to three meals, a meeting and maybe some fishing, Mendelson only somewhat jokingly termed it “the no-summit summit.”
U.S.-Russian relations have slid to their worst point since the Cold War. An anti-terrorism bond forged after the 2001 terrorist attacks has been chipped at repeatedly. Disputes developed over the Iraq war, missile-defense plans, the fate of democracy in Russia, NATO expansion to Russia’s doorstep and sniping over what each side views as meddling in former Soviet republics.
At a summit last month of world economic powers, Putin surprised Bush by proposing that a missile-defense system planned for the Czech Republic and Poland instead use an old Soviet-era radar facility in Azerbaijan.
Stephen Sestanovich, an ambassador to former Soviet republics under President Clinton, said the issues are too technical and the sides too entrenched for heads of state to produce breakthroughs.
What Bush can accomplish, he said, is soothing Russia’s sense it has been ignored while making the case that Moscow is being hurt by its tough talk.
