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Taking part in the face-to-face meeting of the two leaders were also Secretary of the Russian Security Council Vladimir Rushailo and US President’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

The meeting behind closed doors lasted for about two hours before Russian-American top-level consultations continued in full format with the participation of the two delegations.

Opening that part of the talks, Mr Putin noted that Russia and the US were attaining a new quality of relations. He stressed that the current visit by George Bush to Russia was qualitatively different from all the other visits by US heads of state. The previous meetings were aimed at overcoming the contradictions, the Russian leader stressed, but now the countries were attaining a new level of cooperation in security, strategic arms reductions and the building of a new world.

For his part President Bush noted that the US and Russia were engaged in a very important discussion which led to the signing today of a document that attests to the friendly relations between the two countries.

The two leaders signed a number of bilateral documents, including the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty and the joint declaration on the new strategic relations between the two countries. Joint statements were also signed on the new economic relations, the new energy dialogue, contacts between people, anti-terrorist cooperation and the situation in the Middle East.

At the end of the official programme of the first day of the Russian-American summit, Vladimir Putin and George Bush met the co-chairs of the Russian-American business dialogue before holding a joint press conference.