By Nick Bryant BBC Washington correspondent travelling with President Bush

US President George W Bush is due in the Russian city of St Petersburg on Friday for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Bush defended Putin's handling of the Moscow theatre crisis

In an interview with Russian television ahead of his visit, Mr Bush said he would press the Russians to seek a political solution in Chechnya and allay any concerns in the Kremlin over the expansion of Nato to include former Soviet republics.

He also defended Mr Putin's handling of the recent hostage crisis in a Moscow theatre which ended with the deaths of more than 100 hostages after the theatre was stormed by Russian special forces.

Chechnya is likely to figure large in the two-and-a-half hours of talks, with the Bush administration pushing Mr Putin to seek a political solution for a conflict which claims, on average, 10 Russian lives a week.

Iraq issue

What the US wants is a settlement which recognises that Chechnya is part of Russia but acknowledges, too, that ethnic groups there have particular aspirations and cultural ties.

Administration officials have floated the possibility of Northern Ireland-style peace talks, a round table discussion attended, as one put it, by the people with the guns.

The discussions are certain to touch upon Iraq.

Russia was one of the last hold-outs before the adoption of the United Nations resolution earlier this month and has long been Baghdad's most powerful defender on the Security Council.

Mr Bush is likely to say that the US plans to abide by the terms of the UN resolution and is not simply going to use it as a flimsy pretext for war.