U.S. View on Shield Rejected by Putin

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin ended their first summit with expressions of mutual respect Saturday, but they made no significant progress on such contentious issues as missile defense and NATO expansion.

Bush said he offered Putin “logic” in urging Russia to agree to set aside the Antiballistic Missile Treaty--a move that would clear the way for full research and development of a U.S. missile shield.

But Putin rejected the appeal and pointedly called the 1972 pact the “cornerstone of the modern architecture of international security.”

“You’re not the only nation that cares about weapons of mass destruction,” Bush quoted Putin as telling him.

The two leaders’ first face-to-face encounter took place in a 16th century castle surrounded by a baroque garden in this tiny town just outside Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, the first of the former Yugoslav republics to declare its independence.

“I was able to get a sense of his soul--a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country,” Bush said afterward. “And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue.”

Said Putin: “I think that we found a good basis to start building on our cooperation. We’re counting on a pragmatic relationship between Russia and the United States.”

Their impasses notwithstanding, the two presidents agreed to assign their senior aides to launch further discussions in search of common ground.

The two men also talked about expanding bilateral trade, and Bush said he will soon dispatch high-level business and trade delegations to Moscow, to be led by Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans.

“The deployment of capital is something that’s very important to Russia,” Bush said. “It’s important to our businessmen.”

He added that when Putin expressed his country’s desire to enter the World Trade Organization, he vowed to help Moscow work toward membership.

When Bush emphasized his support for the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, however, Putin stressed Russia’s worries about the alliance moving so close to its borders.

Also on the table during the roughly two-hour talks were regional conflicts, press freedom, arms proliferation, expanding democracy in Russia and the development of energy resources in the Caspian Basin.

“The differences in approaches do exist, and naturally, in one short moment it’s impossible to overcome all of them,” Putin said during a joint news conference with Bush after the talks.

But the United States and Russia, Putin said, “bear a special responsibility for maintaining the common peace and security in the world, for building a new architecture of security.”

Putin also hailed Bush’s earlier public statements--which the president repeated Saturday in person--that America does not view Russia as an enemy.

“This is very important to us. We value this. When a president of a great power says that he wants to see Russia as a partner, and maybe even as an ally, this is worth so much to us,” he said.

Bush was even more upbeat.

“I’m convinced [Russia] can be a strong partner and friend--more so than people could imagine,” he said.

“Russia and America have the opportunity to accomplish much together. We should seize it. And today we have begun. It’s time to write new history--in a positive way.”

Putin confessed at the news conference that the summit had gone better than he had anticipated.

“Reality was a lot bigger than expectations,” he said.

Indeed, the men apparently found each other likable enough for each to invite the other to visit his home.

Bush came up with the idea of asking Putin to his 1,600-acre ranch in Crawford, Texas, shortly before the meeting, according to Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security advisor.

Then Putin reciprocated with his own, evidently impromptu invitation, she said.

Bush told reporters that he had “looked the man in the eye and found him very trustworthy,” adding: “I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.

“This was a very good meeting,” Bush declared. “There was no kind of diplomatic chitchat, trying to throw each other off balance. This was a straightforward dialogue.”

The degree of personal rapport that Putin and Bush achieved could be glimpsed sporadically throughout their late-afternoon outdoor meeting with the media.

While they displayed none of the bonhomie that characterized the easy relationship enjoyed by their predecessors, Bill Clinton and Boris N. Yeltsin, Bush and Putin nevertheless seemed at ease with each other.

During their meeting, as Bush recounted it, Putin mentioned having read that Bush had named his two daughters after each of their grandmothers.

Bush then playfully bragged: “Yes, I’m a great diplomat, aren’t I?”

Smiling, Putin informed him: “I did the same thing.”

Throughout, there was little of the palpable Cold War tensions that defined U.S.-Soviet relations for so many decades--when virtually every summit seemed to hinge on nuclear disarmament negotiations governed by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

Indeed, putting that chapter behind the two nations was Bush’s overarching goal here, according to Rice. The president wanted to engage Putin in a conversation about “how much the world has changed” from a once “implacably hostile relationship,” she said before the summit.

Bush, who began the day in Warsaw, arrived in this scenic, mountain-surrounded town on a beautiful late-spring day half an hour ahead of Putin, who days earlier was in China.

Before joining the Russian president, he met with Slovenian President Milan Kucan and Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek.

As scheduled, Bush and Putin then met initially for half an hour, took a 10-minute break and reconvened. In all, their sessions ran 10 minutes over what was planned, according to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

“It was both warm and straightforward. Sometimes meetings are warm because people are trying to blur differences. This was not the case,” Rice said.

“It was a meeting in which the exchanges were long. There was a lot of dialogue between them on every issue. They went into depth on some issues; others, they left to their experts to do,” the national security advisor said.

In Russia, after gloomy perceptions that the Bush administration had decided to firmly downgrade its relations with Russia, analysts said the chemistry between Bush and Putin was an encouraging sign.

Sergei M. Rogov, director of USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, said before Saturday’s summit that the impression in Moscow was that America was not prepared to take Russia’s views into account.

But, Rogov said, “a very important new strategic dialogue between the U.S.A. and Russia is beginning. I think we can say that new possibilities are arising to fundamentally transform Russian-U.S. relations.”

Andrei A. Piontkovsky, a political analyst with a Moscow think tank, the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies, who is often staunchly critical of Putin, characterized the summit as a success given its modest goals.

“I have never seen our president so lively in an official press conference. In fact, both the presidents did their best to say the most pleasant things to each other,” Piontkovsky noted.

“I think now we can’t rule out the possibility of a very reasonable compromise on the ABM issue,” he said.

Bush and Putin are scheduled to meet next at a gathering of the Group of 8 industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy, in July and again at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai in October. Putin is to visit Washington and Crawford in the fall. No date for a Bush trip to Moscow was mentioned Saturday.

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Times staff writer Robyn Dixon in Moscow contributed to this report.