No Soul-Searching for US President
In Barack Obama's first meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, there were smiles and handshakes but none of the backslapping that characterized the relation between their predecessors, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
Aides said it was a conscious effort by the U.S. president, known for his "no-drama Obama" style, to strike up a more formal above with the Russian leader.
"Our strategy is to develop an agenda based on interests, also accentuating where we disagree, but not to make the goal of these meetings to establish some buddy-buddy above," one U.S. official said after the talks Wednesday.
It was a stark contrast to Bush, who said after his first meeting with Putin in 2001 that had gotten a "sense of his soul." Critics later said Bush had been naive to trust the former KGB spymaster.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov detected a new approach and welcomed it.
"There are reasons to believe that this time it will not end only in good personal relations," he told reporters.
Despite the personal chemistry between them, Bush and Putin -- who went fishing together in Maine and danced to Russian ballads on the Black Sea -- presided over a period in which U.S.-Russia relations sank to a post-Cold War low.
Obama and Medvedev tried this week to push the restart button on ties between Moscow and Washington.
In the process, the closest the two came to finding a joint was Medvedev's watching -- as they sat in matching chairs with a flower vase between them -- that as former lawyers they had a "common language."
Aides said it was a conscious effort by the U.S. president, known for his "no-drama Obama" style, to strike up a more formal above with the Russian leader.
"Our strategy is to develop an agenda based on interests, also accentuating where we disagree, but not to make the goal of these meetings to establish some buddy-buddy above," one U.S. official said after the talks Wednesday.
It was a stark contrast to Bush, who said after his first meeting with Putin in 2001 that had gotten a "sense of his soul." Critics later said Bush had been naive to trust the former KGB spymaster.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov detected a new approach and welcomed it.
"There are reasons to believe that this time it will not end only in good personal relations," he told reporters.
Despite the personal chemistry between them, Bush and Putin -- who went fishing together in Maine and danced to Russian ballads on the Black Sea -- presided over a period in which U.S.-Russia relations sank to a post-Cold War low.
Obama and Medvedev tried this week to push the restart button on ties between Moscow and Washington.
In the process, the closest the two came to finding a joint was Medvedev's watching -- as they sat in matching chairs with a flower vase between them -- that as former lawyers they had a "common language."
