Putin hails 'new trust' with U.S.

Putin talks to journalists in the Kremlin

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian President Vladamir Putin welcomes a new "trust" with the United States, but warns that differences remain over defence plans.

In a lengthy interview with U.S. journalists on Monday, Putin warned against the unilateral undermining of key strategic treaties.

Speaking of his first meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at a weekend summit in Slovenia, Putin said a new trust emerging between the two countries and he was pleased Russia was no longer considered the enemy.

"It seemed to me the words that we said during the press conference were not just formal statements," Putin was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "They indeed reflected a very high level of trust between the two of us. I must say that the president is a nice person to talk to."

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But he warned that unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty "will result in a hectic uncontrolled arms race" in countries near Russia with nuclear aspirations.

Scrapping the treaty -- which he said would also mean "throwing into the trash automatically" the START I and START II treaties -- Putin said would compel Russia to beef up its nuclear capacity.

"Our nuclear potential will be strengthened," he said, adding that it would not take much money to upgrade the nuclear arsenal and that it would be done by putting multiple warheads on strategic missiles.

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The new U.S. administration has said that it needs its controversial national missile defence (NMD) system to counter attacks from "rogue states," dismissing the 1972 ABM treaty -- which allowed each signatory only a single site ringed with defensive missiles -- as a relic of the Cold War.

At the summit Putin defended the 1972 treaty as the cornerstone of three decades of strategic stability.

Putin said that he and Bush had agreed to work together to identify security threats.

"Here we do not have a common position," Putin said.

"The two sides needed to agree on what they meant by the term 'threat,' and work out what prevents us together, or each separately if our partners so wish it, from countering this threat?," Reuters quoted him as saying.

He dismissed U.S. concerns over North Korea saying Pyongyang's technology was antiquated, but did cite religious extremists, among whom he included the Taliban in Afghanistan, as a real threat.

Putin insisted that missile defence shield as proposed would never work.

"It's like a bullet hitting a bullet. Is it possible today or not? Today experts say that it is impossible to achieve this," AP quoted him as saying.

But he said if key treaties were undermined Russian would be forced to reinforce its nuclear capability.

He denied that Russia helped spread the technology for weapons of mass destruction or provided weapons to Iran that the United States or Israel could consider a threat.

The Russian leader also revealed publicly for the first time that he had passed on a message from Chinese President Jiang Zemin to Bush saying his country was ready to put the April downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane by the Chinese military behind them.