Hope, change and reset

Relations between Moscow and the new administration of U.S. President Barack Obama are thawing dramatically, and could lead to breakthrough deals on cutting nuclear weapons, military supplies to Afghanistan and talks with Iran, senior foreign policy experts said.
Chief among the deals being discussed is the reduction of nuclear warheads to 1,000 apiece - a cut that would be one of the deepest since the start of the Cold War.
In a statement through his spokeswoman, President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday said he welcomed the Obama administration's initiatives on disarmament and other issues and was "ready for thorough joint work" with Washington, The Associated Press reported.
The comments came two days after Obama called for Washington and Moscow to "lead the way" in reducing the global nuclear threat.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday gave the strongest indication yet that a package of deals could be in the works, welcoming U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's call at the weekend to "press the reset button" in U.S.-Russian relationships and holding out the possibility that Russia would offer its military aircraft to the United States and NATO to supply weapons and troops to Afghanistan.
"Last April and May we discussed the possibility of using Russian military cargo planes to deliver [U.S. and NATO] supplies," Lavrov said in Moscow. "Any other agreements are also possible."
The offer of greater cooperation over Afghanistan appears to come with a few strings attached, however. It comes just days after Kyrgyzstan - which earlier this month was offered a loan of $2 billion by Russia - said it would close the U.S. military base on its soil, at Manas.
The base has been one of the key staging points for the U.S. and NATO military in supplying Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban and Western intervention in the country in 2001.
Russian officials have denied any link between the Kyrgyz decision to shut the base and any offer of financial help from Moscow, and insist that the Kyrgyz base and Afghanistan are not linked in any way.
Biden's call for a fresh start came after several months of frosty Cold War-style relations between Moscow and the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush, particularly over last summer's war in Georgia.
The key high-level meeting came between Biden and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, at the Munich Security Conference in Germany last weekend. Notably, it was the same venue where two years ago then-President Vladimir Putin delivered a trenchant attack on U.S. foreign policy and Washington's plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe.
"The United States and Russia can disagree and still work together where our interests coincide and they coincide in many places," Biden said.
Ivanov, a hawkish former defence minister, said the Obama administration was prepared to "resume the Russian-U.S. dialogue frankly and openly."
Lavrov's offer appeared to move forward from an agreement on Russia supplying non-military goods to troops in Afghanistan, as it held out the possibility of military materiel travelling through Russia.
Russia's outspoken ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said by telephone that the Manas base closure would not affect U.S. operations, precisely because of Russia's transit offers.
On Thursday, U.S. Under Secretary of State William Burns, Washington's point man on nuclear talks with Iran and the ambassador to Russia until last year, met with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks on a "broad range of issues in the bilateral relationship," a U.S. Embassy source said.
The talks were a continuation of a telephone conversation held last month between Obama and Medvedev, the source said.
One intriguing possibility reported by Britain's Telegraph newspaper is that so-called back-door negotiations were going on between the Obama transition team and Moscow before the new president's inauguration.
According to the newspaper, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was acting as an unofficial negotiator during two days of talks in Moscow with President Dmitry Medvedev in December.
Kissinger, 85, was a seasoned veteran in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford at the height of the Cold War. Since 2000, he has made frequent visits to Russia, meeting several times with then-President Vladimir Putin. He is currently the U.S. chairman of "Russia-USA: A Look into the Future" - a panel formed last year by former Prime Minister and Foreign Intelligence chief Yevgeny Primakov.
Prior to his December visit, Kissinger last met with Medvedev and Putin in June 2008.
But while signals of a thaw are more positive than they have been in years, experts say it is too early to call them a breakthrough: Obama's new team and Moscow are still testing each other out.
"Nothing is being said openly, but it's a package - Manas, [Afghanistan] transit and disarmament," said Gennady Yevstafyev, a security policy analyst and former official in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service who took part in the talks on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in 1990.
No clear bargaining points were on the table yet, as neither side was ready with a coherent policy, because nothing had been "specifically formulated," Yevstafyev said in a telephone interview.
"We are examining their first gestures," Yevstafyev said.
Two major issues for Russia remain NATO expansion and the U.S. plans to install a missile shield in Eastern Europe. Moscow has noted the Obama administration's positive signals on these issues, but with no specific actions evident, all it can do is adopt a "wait and see" strategy, Yestafyev said.
"The devil is in the details," Yevstafyev said, pointing to just how complex disarmament talks were expected to become. "The START-1 treaty expires on Dec. 5. What should we do? Just let it fall apart?"
Under a 2002 agreement, Russia and the United States agreed to cut nuclear warheads to 1,700 to 2,200 by the end of 2012. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to lead the negotiations on a new arms control treaty that could slash the totals on each side to 1,000.
But according to Yevstafyev, this only applies to "operational" missiles - others could be stockpiled.
With so much to consider in the disarmament talks, some experts believed it was too early to treat the Afghanistan transit issue as part of the negotiations.
"We will see a variety of diplomatic efforts," said James Collins, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia who now serves as director of the Russia-Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. "The arms control negotiation is going to involve a complex of issues. There are all kinds of tradeoffs in the arms control package. But no one is in a position to say what the bargain points will be."
While it was not clear whether Russia's air transit offer was directly linked to the Manas closure, it was being "seen as linked here in Washington," Collins said.
Russian officials denied any link, however.
"I am not a proponent of conspiracy theories," said Rogozin. "The Manas announcement came just two weeks ago, and this agreement is already a year old."
Since previous Russian offers applied only to civilian cargoes, a wider offer to transport military cargoes would increase Russia's indirect involvement in a controversial war, however.
Asked about this change, Rogozin explained that "there is a big difference between air transfer and land transfer."
Rogozin declined to say whether a breakthrough had been achieved, but added: "I wouldn't say that, but it is a big change. We couldn't reach any agreements under Bush."