Russia-Iran Ties Clouding Bush Visit

President Bush arrived in Moscow on Thursday prepared to challenge Russian assistance to Iran’s nuclear development, after telling Germans that in the war against terrorism “we defend not just America or Europe, we are defending civilization itself.”

The president linked the war to Germany’s history of overcoming Nazism and communism--and, indeed, to Europe’s march toward democracy during the 20th century.

“Others killed in the name of racial purity or the class struggle,” Bush said. “These enemies kill in the name of a false religious purity, perverting the faith they claim to hold.”

Bush’s campaign for the broadest support in carrying the battle against terrorism beyond Afghanistan, voiced during a speech to the German Parliament in Berlin, went to the heart of European skittishness over the best way to contain Iraq.

And the president’s pointed statement that an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons could aim its warheads at Moscow suggested that although the evolving U.S.-Russian relationship has overcome the animosities of the Cold War, it has not eliminated all troublesome differences.

The centerpiece of the visit to Moscow, however, will be the signing this afternoon of a quickly negotiated treaty barely three pages long that commits the United States and Russia to cutting their arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads by two-thirds, from roughly 6,000 to no more than 2,200, by the end of 2012.

Bush, making his first visit to Russia, arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport in the sunshine of the spring evening and, with little ceremony, headed to his hotel about half a mile from the Kremlin.

Against the backdrop of arms reduction, Bush’s meetings in Germany and Russia are serving notice that some of the most difficult diplomatic moments the president faces may come not from historic opponents in Moscow but from politically independent Western allies.

Indeed, minutes into the speech to the Bundestag, or lower house of the German Parliament, several lawmakers in the section where members of the former Communist Party sit unveiled a banner directing Bush and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to “Stop Your Wars.”

And Wolfgang Thierse, the president of the lower house, used his introduction of Bush to call on the U.S. to adhere to the course mapped out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the global warming agreement Bush has rejected. Facing the president, Thierse also chastised the U.S. for rejecting an agreement to create the International Criminal Court.

Such comments clearly define the different ways Europe and the U.S. appear to see the challenges they face. For his part, Bush focused largely on the role of Europe, including Russia, in fighting not just the immediate war on terrorism but the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, biological and chemical--held by “rogue” nations or terrorists.

At a news conference with Schroeder, Bush said he will make the case with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, with whom he meets today and Saturday, that “if you arm Iran, you’re liable to get the weapons pointed at you; that you’ve got to be careful in dealing with a country like Iran.”

Russia is working with Iran on a multibillion-dollar project to develop a nuclear power plant in the city of Bushehr. U.S. intelligence experts fear that the technology could be put to military uses, producing enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Iran “is run by a group of extremists who fund terrorist activity, who clearly hate our mutual friend, Israel,” Bush said. “Russia needs to be concerned about proliferation into a country that might view them as an enemy at some point in time. And if Iran gets a weapon of mass destruction, deliverable by a missile, that’s going to be a problem ... for all of us, including Russia.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do with Russia,” he added.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov offered an immediate protest. “Russia sticks firmly to its international obligations, and we have repeatedly told the United States this,” he said in a television interview before Bush arrived.

A senior Bush administration official, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the flight to Moscow, said the Russian program with Iran represented the greatest nuclear proliferation threat.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. hopes to solve the problem by persuading Russia to scale down its cooperation with Iran.

Bush’s visit prompted several demonstrations in Moscow on Thursday, as well as a heightened police presence. Several hundred protesters, most of them aligned with the Communist Party, burned American flags in front of the U.S. Embassy.

Critics have complained that the arms agreement Bush and Putin will sign does not order the destruction of the warheads that will be decommissioned and stored, creating an inviting quarry for terrorists.

“Would you rather have them on the launchers? Would you rather have the warheads pointed at people? I would think not,” Bush said.

The president said the major Western democracies were working to create a $20-billion fund, half supplied by the U.S., to secure stored warheads.

Bush spoke to the German Parliament at the Reichstag. Although rebuilt on the inside, the structure has kept its 19th century exterior, with its dedication--”Dem Deutschen Volke” (To the German People)--carved over the entrance. The building evokes Nazi history; Adolf Hitler used an act of arson there as a reason to crack down on his opponents.

For a second day, central Berlin was turned eerily silent, all traffic and most pedestrians banned for security reasons.

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, a demonstration beyond the secured zone grew to about 20,000 people. Skirmishes erupted between protesters and police, who used water cannons to disperse the demonstrators. Rocks, sticks and bottles slightly injured 44 police officers. Fifty-eight people were detained.

Bush made no mention of the opposition in the streets. But he used his speech to present not just a defense of the direction in which he is trying to lead the U.S. and its allies, but also to warn that ignoring the threats exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks is akin to overlooking the Holocaust or appeasing Germany as it occupied new lands before World War II.

“Those who despise human freedom will attack it on every continent,” he said. “Those who seek missiles and terrible weapons are also familiar with the map of Europe. Like the threats of another era, this threat cannot be appeased or cannot be ignored.”

The president’s enunciation of the moral foundation of the war against terrorism is familiar to American audiences. But the speech offered Bush a rare opportunity to deliver that message to an audience of leaders in Europe, where public opinion is less supportive of the military campaign.

Placing that campaign in the context of European history, the president referred to an undivided, free Europe living in peace, and said, “This dream of the centuries is close at hand.”

Bush said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, born to defend the West against the Soviet Union, finds itself with a defining purpose of self-defense that is “as urgent as ever”--the cooperative fight against global terrorism.

Repeatedly, his audience broke into restrained applause, seconding nearly every reference he made to the pursuit of peace. The audience generally showed less enthusiasm when he called for standing steadfast in the war on terrorism.

With efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction a central element in his foreign policy agenda, Bush warned that terrorist-sponsoring nations are developing nuclear, chemical and biological arms “and the missiles to deliver them.”

“If we ignore this threat,” he said, “we invite certain blackmail and place millions of our citizens in grave danger.”

Bush’s call for resolute action against Iraq drew a cool but polite reaction across the German political spectrum.

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the senior member of the pacifist Greens Party in Schroeder’s coalition government, praised Bush’s promise to use a variety of means, including financial pressures as well as military operations, to fight terrorism.

Bavarian Gov. Edmund Stoiber, leader of the Christian Social Union, who is challenging Schroeder for the chancellery in Sept. 22 elections, lauded Bush’s address for respecting differences of opinion expressed by European allies.

Gerstenzang reported from Berlin and Moscow and Williams from Berlin. Times staff writer Maura Reynolds and special correspondent Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow contributed to this report.