MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday called on the United States to move relations forward by shelving plans for a missile defence shield in Europe, news agencies reported.

Days before a visit to Moscow by US President Barack Obama, Putin was quoted as saying if Washington changed its approach to expanding military alliances — a clear reference to Nato — it would also move relations forward with Moscow.

“If we see (that) our American partners refrain from deploying new missile complexes, anti-missile defence systems, or for example review their approach to widening military- political blocs, or generally refrain from bloc-like thinking, this would be a big movement forward,” Interfax quoted Putin as telling reporters.

Expectations

The comments come ahead of Obama’s visit to Moscow on July 6-8. Obama is expected to meet both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin.

“We are ready for effective cooperation, we really expect a lot of the new administration,” Putin said on an agricultural inspection in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.

The Russian and US presidents plan next week to sign deals on replacing a Cold War-era missile treaty and the transit of US military supplies bound for Afghanistan, a Kremlin aide said yesterday.

The leaders plan to sign a “joint agreement on military transit to Afghanistan,” Prikhodko told reporters at a briefing in the Kremlin.

The transit will be via land and air, but mostly by air, Prikhodko said. Currently, the US can only transit non-lethal goods across Russia by rail.

US and Russian negotiators have still not reached agreement on cutting stocks of their deadliest nuclear weapons ahead of Obama’s first visit to Moscow on Monday.

The two leaders would sign a framework agreement and then instruct negotiators to produce a detailed treaty ready for signing by December, when an existing pact known as START-1 regulating the number of long-range nuclear weapons expires.

But Moscow has still not indicated what figure it will settle for, the sources said.

“The reason you haven’t seen any firm figures about cuts is that the negotiations are still going on,” one senior source close to the process said.

“We are unlikely to know before on Monday what the Russians will agree to and we may only find out when Obama gets to the Kremlin.” Obama is due to meet Medvedev for talks at the Kremlin on Monday afternoon.

US officials are still confident of securing an outline arms deal, as well as Moscow’s assent for convoys of lethal US military equipment bound for Afghanistan to cross Russian territory, but any agreements may yet be torpedoed by the bitterly fought issue of missile defence.

Anti-missile systems

Washington plans to station anti-missile batteries and radar detection systems in the Czech Republic and Poland as part of a global system to spot and shoot down hostile enemy rockets before they reach the US

Moscow, which relies heavily on nuclear weapons for its defence because of the poor state of its conventional weapons, fiercely opposes the anti-missile system as a threat to its security.

Kremlin sources have said that Obama has shown less interest in pursuing the anti-missile plans.