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Bush: Russia's new president is 'smart guy'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-07 15:19 The two, however, are at opposite ends of their political lives. Bush is on his way out and Medvedev just took office in May. This is Bush's eighth and final G-8. This is Medvedev's freshman year at the summit. "I reminded him that yes I'm leaving, but not until six months, and I'm sprinting to the finish," Bush said. "So we can get a lot done together, and you know there are a lot of important issues like Iran. There's an area where Russia and the United States have worked closely in the past and will continue to work closely to convince the regime to give up its desire to enrich uranium." The two leaders, who are also united in their fight against international terrorism and want to see a Middle East peace accord and a future for Afghanistan, talked on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations. Japan is hosting the event at a heavily guarded luxury resort atop Poromoi Mountain in Hokkaido, an island in northern Japan. US and Polish officials are negotiating to base American missiles in Poland for a future missile shield against Iran. Still, there is no guarantee the shield will ever be built or would work as advertised. Negotiations over the 10 missile interceptors are proving more contentious than the US had anticipated. The site would be linked to a missile-tracking radar that Washington wants to place in the Czech Republic. The Czech government has agreed in principle to the plan, but parliament's approval is still needed. Russia is staunchly against the US plans, arguing that US military installations in former Soviet satellites so close to its borders would pose a threat Russian security. Moscow has threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic. The US maintains that the plan poses no threat to the Kremlin's vast nuclear arsenal. After the talks, a Kremlin aide accentuated the positive in US-Russian relations, but said Bush and Medvedev made no progress on the missile-defense issue — the major point of disagreement between them. Sergei Prikhodko said the talks were "exclusively well-intentioned, constructive, and open, but at times critical." Prikhodko said Russia is not yet satisfied with transparency measures the United States has offered to take in order to ease Moscow's concerns the system would be aimed at weakening Russia's defenses. Medvedev also expressed serious concern about media reports that the US has discussed the possibility of deploying interceptors in Lithuania, if its first choice of basing them in Poland doesn't work out. "This is absolutely unacceptable for the Russian Federation," Prikhodko said of the Lithuanian plan.
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