RUSSIA - Oct. 18 - FM Ivanov Meets Powell Before Putin-Bush Meet.

After a day of talks with foreign and trade ministers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, FM Igor Ivanov meets US Secretary of State Powell in Shanghai. A Russian diplomat says the meeting has created "favourable conditions" for "forming a new framework for strategic relations" between Moscow and Washington. The next step will take place on Oct. 21 when Pres. Putin will meet US Pres. Bush in Shanghai on the sidelines of a summit meeting of Asian and Pacific leaders. The diplomat says the meeting of the two leaders, to be followed by talks next month in Crawford, Texas, at Bush's home, "will be of exceptional significance in this sense". The burst of momentum in the strategic arms negotiations, stalemated for months after the two leaders opened them this summer at their first meetings in Slovenia and Genoa, follows Putin's announcement last month that he was opening Russian airspace to the US airlift of military and humanitarian cargo to Central Asian republics for deployment on Afghanistan's northern frontier. Along with its support for the US military campaign in Afghanistan, Moscow is offering its oil as a secure alternative to dependence on the oil from the Gulf. Powell said: "Not only is the Cold War over. The post-Cold-War period is also over".

Some analysts say Washington and Moscow now regard the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US as a watershed event in international relations that has offered opportunities for Putin and Bush to battle a common enemy. This opening could generate a level of co-operation that inoculates Putin against domestic critics who grumble that he is compromising Russian security by making concessions to Washington. And Putin's unusually strong support for US intervention in Central Asia allows Bush to promote a greater role for Russia in Western security. In recent days Powell has emphasised that Washington is now prepared to make the kind of deep cuts in its nuclear arsenal that Moscow has been seeking as a possible trade-off for agreeing to amendment of the 1972 ABM Treaty. A senior State Department official travelling with Powell said he would not go so far as to predict that Putin was ready to accept US proposals to modify the ABM Treaty. But he emphasised an "across-the-board" change in attitude by the Russian leadership towards co-operation on everything from strategic issues to fighting terrorism and closer relations between Moscow and the NATO. He said the decisions by Moscow to abandon the eavesdropping base in Cuba and give up its lease on the Cam Ranh Bay naval base in Vietnam signified a change of thinking that went beyond the financial savings that both steps would yield for the Russian military.

He adds: "Clearly the Russians, in making these decisions for financial or whatever other reasons, do see this as a new opportunity in a changed time, and it comes up again when we talk about NATO-Russian co-operation".