Bush is turning on charm for Putin

WASHINGTON -- Turning on the personal touch, President Bush welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Camp David on Friday at the end of a tough week of diplomacy to round up international support for postwar operations in Iraq.

Unlike earlier meetings with world leaders of no longer than an hour each in New York, Bush is entertaining Putin overnight at the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

Putin -- whom Bush was quick to pronounce a straight shooter after their first meeting more than two years ago -- has already been to the White House and to the president's central Texas ranch. And in the reciprocal rounds of personal diplomacy, Bush has been Putin's guest in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.

"They have developed a strong relationship," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, explaining that the personal touch is just "part of the president's style."

"He considers Mr. Putin a friend."

That friendship will be tested again this weekend as the two leaders work their way through a thicket of thorny issues, with Iraq surely near the top.

Bush, who is seeking a new resolution of support from the United Nations, met with about a dozen wary world leaders Tuesday and Wednesday in New York but came away with little to show for it.

French President Jacques Chirac, for instance, is still largely opposed to helping the United States in Iraq. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder remains reluctant to do much more than train Iraqi police officers in Germany. And U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has ordered another reduction in staff at the U.N. mission in Baghdad after two bombings.

Nonetheless, Secretary of State Colin Powell says he's beginning to see a "convergence of views" among key members of the U.N. Security Council that could lead to a compromise.

At the White House, McClellan offered no timetable for any U.N. agreement, nor any notion of what it might finally say.

"We feel good about the talks," he said. "The conversations have been constructive."

Like Chirac and Schroeder, Putin also adamantly opposed the U.S.- led invasion of Iraq. But unlike them, he has not firmly dismissed the possibility of deploying troops to Iraq to help secure the war- torn country and rebuild it.

In an interview with foreign correspondents outside Moscow last weekend, the Russian president said that "theoretically" he could dispatch military forces to Iraq, but that practically he was not now considering it.

Addressing the United Nations later, he urged "direct" U.N. participation in postwar operations in Iraq and, in a not-so-subtle reference to the United States, said, "being a world power means being together with the world community."

Exactly what sort of deal Putin might strike with Bush over Iraq is unclear. But some analysts suggest the time is right for the Russian leader to step forward.

"This is the first summit where Bush needs success more than Putin does," said Nikolai Zlobin, director of Russian and Asian programs at the Center for Defense Information.

Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Non-proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also suggested that Putin might seize the occasion to help, particularly since Bush had come back "fairly empty-handed from New York."

Russian aid, though, would not likely come in the form of major combat units, he said, but rather as other forces that could be assigned to reconstruction, patrolling the borders, providing personal security and other missions.

"Putin can hold that out as a deliverable, or as an incentive for Bush to then give something back," Wolfsthal suggested.

Putin faces parliamentary elections at home in December and is up for re-election in March -- a pair of pressing domestic events that Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said may restrain the Russian leader in his aid to Bush.

Clifford Gaddy, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agreed that there would be "some political costs at home" if Putin intervened now in Iraq but said the benefits could potentially be far greater.

"It's a perfect opportunity," Gaddy said. "Russia could just throw in a few thousand (troops), and it would look really good and score really big points."

Analysts are not expecting any dramatic announcements at the end of the weekend talks, though the two leaders plan a joint news conference Saturday morning.

"For the first time, Russia is coming to the United States with the idea, 'We want you to like us,' " Zlobin said, noting that Putin had been on a public relations blitz in New York, visiting firefighters, business leaders at the New York Stock Exchange and students at Columbia University.

"We don't want just President Bush to like President Putin. We got that," added Zlobin, a Russian scholar who writes regularly for the Russian newspaper Izvestia.

"We want America to like Russia."

While Iraq will certainly be a dominant issue, Bush and Putin will also certainly discuss energy and other economic issues and delve into some of the world's other hot spots -- Iran, North Korea and the Middle East, where the "road map" to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is in tatters.

In all those areas, Russia is already a player, though not always on the U.S. team.

It is a member of the Quartet -- along with the United States, the United Nations and the European Union -- that is pushing the road map.

It is an ally in the six-way talks with North Korea -- along with the United States, South Korea, Japan and China -- aimed at getting Pyongyang to back off its nuclear weapons program.

Also, Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant, which the Bush administration fears may be providing the Iranians key technology to develop nuclear weapons.

"You bet, I'll talk to President Putin about it this weekend," Bush told reporters at the White House, referring to Russia's aid to Iran. "It is very important for the world to come together to make it very clear to Iran that there will be universal condemnation if they continue with a nuclear weapons program."

Bush is also expected to raise the issue of the war in Chechnya, where Moscow is waging a bloody military campaign against Chechen separatists.

"Our views are very clear," McClellan said. "It's important that terrorism be confronted and stopped everywhere, including Chechnya."

Still, he emphasized that any lasting resolution there must also include "putting an end to human rights abuses and punishing those who commit them and then concluding a political settlement in which free and fair elections will be an important part."

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