Publications
Partners
Moscow - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for talks on Libya in the middle of the first major public spat between Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Gates will not meet Putin but will see President Medvedev, who rebuked his mentor on Monday for comparing the West's call for action in Libya with the crusades, the most public difference yet between Russia's ruling tandem ahead of 2012 elections.
Meeting his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov early on Tuesday, Gates said he wanted the "momentum" of warming ties between the Cold War foes to "continue to build today".
Earlier, Gates praised Russian leaders for choosing to abstain rather than vote against a UN Security Council resolution authorising military action in Libya, Interfax said.
Medvedev defended that decision on Monday, saying he did not consider the resolution wrong. Putin, in some of his harshest criticism of the United States since President Barack Obama started a push for better ties, compared action on Libya to the Iraq invasion and said it showed Russia was right to spend billions on its military.
He told workers at a missile factory in central Russia that the UN Security Council resolution was flawed and it "resembles medieval calls for crusades".
Moscow has called on the United States, Britain and France to halt air strikes that are killing civilians, as alleged by Tripoli but strongly denied by the Pentagon.
Gates, speaking in St. Petersburg at the start of his two-day visit to Russia, told Interfax the mission was to establish a no-fly zone and "prevent a humanitarian disaster, to prevent Gaddafi from slaughtering his own people".
"I think we've made a lot of progress just in a couple of days toward accomplishing those two objectives," he said in an interview with the news agency.
Missile defence?
Putin made his comments a day before Gates, a former CIA director expected to retire later this year, spoke to Serdyukov about improving ties between the former Cold War foes.
In a defence ministry compound, Gates told Serdyukov the two had "a full agenda" to discuss, including Libya, missile defence and the war in Afghanistan.
Moscow, still haunted by its decade-long Soviet war with Afghanistan, has helped set up the Northern Distribution Network, a key supply route.
The implementation of the New START nuclear arms treaty will also be addressed, the two said.
A holdover from the Bush administration, Gates saw first hand the US-Russia relationship deteriorate over Russia's 2008 war against pro-western Georgia, and then improve under Obama.
Obama's effort to "reset" ties, crowned with the arms pact which came into force last month, limits each country to 1 550 deployed strategic warheads and 800 delivery systems by 2018.
Russia's chief negotiator on the nuclear arms treaty with the United States has outlined tough conditions for further reductions, stressing Moscow's demand for an equal say in creating a European missile shield.
Moscow worries the shield could weaken Russia's offensive arsenal and upset the balance of power.
"The United States would far prefer to have Russia as a partner in European missile defence," Gates told Interfax.
"I think that we can provide political assurances that would reassure Russia that no aspect of our missile defense is ever intended to be used against Russia," he told the news agency.
