Moscow - Russia yesterday firmly rebuffed an attempt by the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, to scrap a key 1972 arms treaty and pressed instead for detailed negotiations linking missile defence and nuclear arms cuts.
The sides adopted contrary positions in a day of intense talks at the Russian defence ministry and at the Kremlin that seemed to bring them no closer to resolving the dispute over US plans for a missile defence system.
The Russians notably rejected the US view that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed in 1972 by Moscow and Washington and which rules out the kind of anti-missile defences the US is proposing, has outlived its usefulness.
But emphasising the positive, President Putin told Mr Rumsfeld he thought a solution could be reached in the dispute.
Both Mr Putin and the Russian Defence Minister, Mr Sergei Ivanov, urged Mr Rumsfeld to provide detailed proposals on nuclear arms cuts so that negotiations closely linking them to missile defence could begin.