MOSCOW — For two days, President Barack Obama pressed the reset button with Russia.
The results: He got the expected agreement on deep cuts in nuclear arsenals, but he is leaving Moscow with few assurances of Kremlin help in solving other issues key to his foreign policy agenda.
He also is leaving behind a spark he hopes will blaze to life and thaw U.S. relations with a former superpower with a chip on its shoulder. But his two days of summitry produced no breakthroughs.
Throughout the meetings and speeches, Obama stayed on message: The United States and Russia have too many overlapping interests to move through the coming decades at odds. The time for confrontational Cold War thinking is well-past. America wants Russia to be "strong, peaceful and prosperous.”
Issues left on table
On several issues key to Obama foreign policy, the Russians were unbending, at least for now.
While they agreed to join the U.S. in reassessing the threat from Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there was no hoped-for Kremlin offer of direct intervention with Tehran.
On the flash point issue of Georgia, where the Russian army crushed the tiny country’s military a year ago, the Kremlin rejected U.S. complaints about Russian insistence that breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain free of Georgian control.
Nor did there appear to have been progress in the dispute over arms control.
The two sides did agree to far greater cooperation on Afghanistan, where Obama is bolstering U.S. troop strength in the fight against militants.
Negotiators also prepared a series of side agreements and established a commission nominally headed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It is designed to quicken the pace of U.S.-Russian engagement on issues important to both countries.
by the associated press
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