[Site of first BushPutin summit in
Slovenia, Saturday, June, 16, 2001. Read
photo caption below]


Bush, Putin to Meet for First Time, Build Relations

WARSAW (Reuters) - President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet on Saturday for the first time, far apart on U.S. missile defense plans but eager to size each other up and start to build a working relationship.
The former Texas oilman and the one-time KGB spy will meet for two hours in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana to discuss thorny issues including weapons proliferation, NATO enlargement and hot spots like the Middle East and the Balkans.
Both men said they were looking forward to their talks in the hilltop, medieval Brdo Castle. Aides played down the chances of any formal agreements, saying it was more a chance to get know each other than to spar over detailed policies.
Still, the meeting will force the men to confront their sharp differences on Washington's desire to develop a limited defense to shoot down rogue missile attacks from states like Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea.
Moscow resists the idea because it would entail scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which forbids such defensive systems and which Russia views as a bedrock of strategic stability for the last three decades.
Throughout his five-day trip to Europe this week, Bush said he wanted to make the case to Putin that such a shield was not designed to give Washington strategic superiority over Moscow, but rather to protect against ``blackmail'' from rogue states.
COLD WAR RELIC
``The ABM treaty is a relic of the past,'' the U.S. president said as he began his first official trip to Europe, a journey that has taken him to Spain, Belgium, Sweden and Poland and will end on Saturday in Slovenia.
Bush argued that the treaty was an outdated product of the Cold War era, ``a time when the United States and Russia were bitter enemies and the whole concept of peace was based upon the capacity of each of us...to blow each other up.''
``The new threats are threats based upon uncertainty. The threats that somebody who hates freedom or hates America or hates our allies or hates Europe will try to blow us up,'' he added.
The ABM treaty rests on the Cold War principle of mutually assured destruction -- the idea that neither Washington nor Moscow would launch a nuclear attack on the other because of the certainty of massive retaliation.
Putin struck a conciliatory note on Friday, saying he wanted to hear Bush's strategic thinking straight from the source and hoped their debut summit would help find a common approach to global security.
``I hope we can succeed in starting the process of working out common approaches to determining the future architecture of international security,'' he told reporters in Moscow. ``I'll be flying there in good spirits.''
Earlier in the week, however, Kremlin aides laid out a much harder line, with one repeating Moscow's view that undermining the ABM pact ``can destroy the system of disarmament agreements and deal an irreparable blow to non-proliferation regimes.''
WEAPONS PROLIFERATION
On Friday, Bush said he was concerned about possible weapons proliferation along Russia's borders, a perennial irritant in U.S.-Russian relations.
He said he would raise the issue with Putin, as well as urge him to pursue economic reforms, the protection of civil liberties and respect for religious freedom.
Bush also said he would make the case that expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include several former Soviet satellites -- bringing the Western security alliance to Russia's borders -- posed no threat to Moscow.
``I will express to President Putin that Russia is part of Europe and therefore does not need a buffer zone of insecure states separating it from Europe,'' Bush said in Warsaw. ``NATO, even as it grows, is no enemy of Russia.''
Bush said the most important thing about the summit was the chance for the two men to take each other's measure.
``He doesn't know me and I don't know him very well,'' Bush said on Friday. ``First and foremost is to develop a trust between us.''
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PHOTO CAPTION

Castle Brdo pri Kranju, near the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, will be the site of the summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday June 16, 2001. (AP Photo/File)
- Jun 15 7:23 PM ET
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