PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Sharp differences between the United States and Russia over President Bush's plan to build a missile defense system on Moscow's doorstep are likely to dominate talk during Bush's European tour.
Bush, who arrived late Monday in Prague at the start of an eight-day trip to the G-8 summit of industrialized nations and half a dozen countries, will see President Vladimir Putin at the summit in Germany later this week. It likely will be a difficult talk; relations between Washington and Moscow are strained almost to the breaking point, and Putin has been harshly critical of U.S. foreign policy.
Bush's message in advance of the trip has been to calm down, reminding Russia that "the Cold War is over." As if to drive home that point, Bush was bookending his summit stay with calls on the Czech Republic and Poland, former Soviet satellites where he wants to base major parts of the new defense shield.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Putin's comments were "not helpful."
"It is just not an argument that is acceptable in a world in which the United States and Russia are not adversaries," Rice told reporters on her plane en route to an Organization of American States meeting in Panama City, Panama. "This isn't the Soviet Union and we need to drop the rhetoric that sounds like what the United States and the Soviet Union used to say about each other and realize it is the United States and Russia in a very different period."
Rice added: "It doesn't really help anybody to start threatening the Europeans. ... You cannot launch a threat at Europe that is separable from the United States."
Bush's strategic defense plan can hardly be seen as anything less than a poke in the eye to Putin, however.
"This is a distinctive message that is as easily understandable in Russian as it is in English," said Simon Serfaty, a senior adviser to the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The message is that we're going to do what we're going to do, and your concerns about the deployment of some marginal capabilities designed for defense purposes in Central Europe are not going to impress me."
Speaking to foreign reporters before he travels to Germany for the summit, Putin warned that Moscow could take "retaliatory steps" if Washington goes forward with the missile plan, including possibly aiming nuclear weapons at targets in Europe.
Putin said neither Iran nor North Korea have the rockets the American system is intended to shoot down, suggesting the system would be used instead against Russia.
Besides the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, Bush also has Italy, Albania and Bulgaria on his travel itinerary. He has meetings planned with at least 15 foreign leaders, plus the Pope, and his schedule isn't final yet.
But the spat with Putin is front and center.
U.S. officials have insisted - publicly and to Putin personally - that the system planned for Eastern Europe is meant to protect NATO allies against a missile launch from Iran, which the West suspects of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Moscow isn't buying it, insisting the system must be aimed at Russia and accusing Washington of touching off a new arms race.
Saying it is now forced to strengthen its military potential, Russia test-fired new missiles and declared a moratorium on observing its obligations under a key Soviet-era arms control treaty. Putin assailed "imperialism" in global affairs, saying the shield would turn Europe into a "powder keg" and accusing the U.S. of "an almost uncontained hyper use of force."
Arguments about the missile defense plan came on top of Washington worries about backsliding on democracy under Putin's leadership - even as the U.S. courts Russia's assistance in curtailing Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs. Putin, meanwhile, is increasingly riled over what he views as U.S. meddling in his backyard.
Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Prague said that on this trip Bush will "talk a little bit about the challenge of promoting democracy in countries, big countries in particular, where we have a complex relationship with a lot of interests, places like China and Russia."
Russia will be cited, he said, "because there are not exceptions to the freedom agenda."
To settle things down, Bush has invited the Russian leader for an unprecedented stay at his family's summer compound on the Maine coast in July. But he also is hosting Estonia's president at the White House the week before. Like the Czech and Polish stops, this meeting will not please the Russians, angry with Estonia for moving a memorial to Soviet soldiers killed during World War II.
This sort of strategic travel-planning isn't new for Bush.
The president agreed to attend Putin's Red Square celebration in May 2005 of the 60th anniversary of WWII's end. But he started that trip in Latvia and ended it in Georgia, both ex-Soviet republics that the president used as backdrops for rhetoric on the power of democracy.
Later that year, Bush made a state visit to communist China. But first he delivered a pointed speech in Japan that amounted to a lecture for Beijing to increase political and economic freedoms. And he flew directly from China to Mongolia, the first Asian nation to discard communism in favor of democracy.
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