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Mr Putin expressed his satisfaction with “Russian-US dialogue regaining necessary dynamism as we were starting to tackle basic practical issues on the bilateral agenda”. As he saw it, those issues pertained to security, strategic stability, non-proliferation, joint efforts to settle exacerbating regional crises, and the development of economic partnership.

Mr Putin said he hoped that a meeting of the heads of state preceding the G8 summit in Genoa would “give further impetus to Russian-US dialogue and interaction”. He stressed that it was most important for the upcoming meeting to “clear up unwelcome misunderstandings and ungrounded concerns, clarify presently obscure points and chart the basic directions of developing Russian-US contacts in many fields”.

“What matters most is the shared realisation of how necessary it is to seek ways to settle current problems together, as one can hardly offer an adequate response to new global threats and challenges single-handed. In this connection, I fully share your idea that Russia and the United States must closely cooperate to establish the basis of international peace and security in the 21st century,” Mr Putin said.

As he went over to “sensitive issues”, the President mentioned, in particular, US plans for an ABM system that would “de facto annul the ABM Treaty of 1972 and all essential disarmament agreements related to it”. He stressed in this context the importance of further “detailed discussions of the problems of strategic nuclear forces and anti-missile defence” at the expert level—in particular, with a view to parallel Russian and US consultations with other directly interested countries.

“It is impossible to arrive at coordinated solutions overnight and in a hurry. As I have said, we must hold ‘first, do no harm’ as our basic principle. This is the only way not to endanger the entire international legal and political basis for transition from an unreliable post-confrontation peace to stable and secure international partnership—a basis it cost us tremendous effort to establish over the past few years,” the President concluded.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov passed the message to the White House during his visit to Washington.