- PUSHKIN, Russia (Reuters)
- President Bush and Russia's Vladimir Putin warned Iraq on Friday to disarm
or face tough consequences, but the Kremlin chief also told his guest any
action against Baghdad should be within U.N. rules.
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- Putin, in talks at a grandiose palace outside Saint Petersburg,
also grudgingly accepted Bush's explanation a day after a NATO summit that
the Alliance's second eastward expansion posed no threat to Moscow's security.
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- Bush later flew to Lithuania, an ex-Soviet Baltic state
and one of seven countries invited at NATO's Prague summit to join. He
is due to complete his European tour in Romania, another future NATO member.
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- Bush and Putin looked relaxed at the end of nearly two
hours of talks, with both pledging to pursue the close ties they have forged
since Moscow backed the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
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- A joint statement piled more pressure on Iraq by urging
President Saddam Hussein to abide by the terms of a U.N. Security Council
resolution clinched this month after Russia secured a number of concessions.
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- "We call on Iraq to comply fully and immediately
with this and all relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, which were
adopted as a necessary step to secure international peace and security,"
the statement said.
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- But Putin stuck to Russia's stand that the United Nations
is the proper avenue for dealing with Iraq, in the face of Bush's repeated
threats to lead a "coalition of the willing" to disarm Iraq of
suspected weapons of mass destruction if necessary.
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- "STAY WITHIN U.N. FRAMEWORK"
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- "We do believe that we have to stay within the framework
of the work being carried out by the Security Council of the United Nations,"
Putin told a concluding joint news conference.
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- "And we do believe that together with the United
States we can achieve a positive result."
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- Russia, an ally of Iraq in the Soviet era with key oil
interests in the country, wants to ensure arms inspections are not used
by the United States to provide grounds for a military invasion to oust
Saddam. Inspectors, last in Iraq in 1998, returned this week to proceed
with checks to determine whether Baghdad holds chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons.
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- Asked whether Russia would consider the use of military
force to help disarm Iraq, Putin said other countries in the region had
provided a home to those who had undermined international security.
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- Most of the hijackers implicated in the September 11
2001 attacks on U.S. landmarks, he said, were from Saudi Arabia. And Osama
bin Laden, presumed mastermind of those attacks, was in hiding "somewhere
between Afghanistan and Pakistan."
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- Since Russian security forces stormed a theater to end
a siege by armed Chechen separatists, Putin has said that Russia, like
other countries, is under attack from an international Islamist conspiracy.
A total of 128 hostages and 41 Chechen rebels died in the operation to
end the siege.
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- Bush welcomed the arrest of al Qaeda leader Abd al-Rahim
al-Nashiri, who is under CIA control after his capture near Yemen. "America,
Russia and people who love freedom are one person safer as a result of
finding this guy," Bush said.
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- IRAQ SAYS "COMPLETELY CLEAN"
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- Iraq's information minister, speaking to Reuters in New
Delhi on Friday, said his country was "completely clean" of all
weapons prohibited by the U.N. Security Council. Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf
said Iraq would cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
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- Bush admitted he and Putin did not agree on everything.
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- "Like other good friends I've had throughout my
life, we don't agree 100 percent of the time," he said. "But
we always agree to discuss things...in a frank way."
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- Bush's stated goal on coming to Russia after leaving
the Prague summit was to reassure Putin that NATO's invitation to seven
ex-communist states represented no threat to Moscow.
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- "Russia is a friend, Russia is not an enemy,"
Bush said.
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- Putin restated his skepticism about expansion, although
he has long since resigned himself to it. And he did not rule out closer
Russia-NATO ties.
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- "We do not believe that this has been necessitated
by the existing facts. But we take note of the position taken by the president
of the United States, and we hope to have positive development in our relations
with all NATO countries," he said.
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- "We do not rule out the possibility of deepening
our relations with the alliance as a whole."
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- In Lithuania, Bush is unlikely to dwell on NATO's key
significance for the Baltic states in NATO membership, the security guarantee
that wins them the freedom from Russian dominance which they have long
sought.
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- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia won back the freedom they
lost during World War II when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. They
have been pressing for NATO membership as a security guarantee.
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- Bush is expected to get a rousing reception in bitter
winter weather when he appears in a square in the 16th century center of
Vilnius on Saturday morning.
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- "He is coming to celebrate our victory with us,"
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus said before Bush arrived.
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