The United States and Russia announced on Saturday moves to avert nuclear terrorism and halt the spread of atomic weapons as they sought to give a boost to a big-power summit.
US President George W. Bush and Russia's Vladimir Putin unveiled the initiatives before other Group of Eight leaders arrived for a summit that will be challenged by violence in the Middle East, Iran's nuclear ambitions and global trade worries.
Despite cooler US-Russia relations, the two men sought to project an image of harmony, playing down differences over Russia's commitment to democracy, possible sanctions on Iran and how to respond to rising violence in the Middle East.
Referring to each other by their first names, Bush was at pains to protect Putin from his own administration's charges that the Kremlin leader was backsliding on democracy.
"I fully understand ... that there will be a Russian-style democracy. I don't expect Russia to look like the United States. As Vladimir pointedly reminded me last night, they have a different history, different traditions," he said.
"We of course don't want to have a democracy like the one in Iraq, to be honest," quipped Putin, a former KGB spy known for his dry sense of humour, after Bush cited Iraq as a country where the United States is promoting democratic freedoms.
The two men announced a plan to combat the global threat of nuclear terrorism with measures to control nuclear material.
In a separate initiative, Bush backed a Russian plan aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons by setting up international enrichment centres under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Turning to the wave of violence in the Middle East following an Israeli offensive in southern Lebanon, the two leaders pinned the blame squarely on Lebanon-based Hizbollah guerrillas.
Bush said he and Putin shared common ground on the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea. But Putin sidestepped a direct question about possible sanctions against Iran - a point of difference with Washington and some other Western powers.