Old friends, new divisions

Leading dailies in Russia are quick to highlight the differences between Moscow and London after British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

One paper contrasts the welcome Mr Blair received on his last visit to the coolness of Tuesday's reception while others believe the visitor was acting as a bridge between Moscow and Washington.

For Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Moscow summit "has a symbolic value" as the first meeting between the two leaders since the end of the Iraq war.

Yesterday's summit opened in a distinctly restrained manner Rossiyskaya Gazeta

But "the beginning of yesterday's meeting did not bode well".

"The last time Blair came to Moscow was last autumn. Then it was clear from the very first moments that the meeting was between two friends. Yesterday's summit opened in a distinctly restrained manner," the paper says.

Izvestiya says Mr Blair was in town "in a dual capacity - as prime minister of one of the belligerent states, which assumes responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq, and as an intermediary between Moscow and Washington".

"As far as Moscow is concerned, the nature of Blair's role changed a long time ago, effectively when the formation of the anti-terrorist coalition began in 2001."

The heavyweight broadsheet Nezavisimaya Gazeta agrees that the British prime minister was acting as a bridge between the Kremlin and the White House.

"This is not the first time, nor the first year that Blair has acted as a bridge. Now he is being called on to play this role again," it says.

The reason, a high-ranking Kremlin source told the daily, is that "the degree of Russian-British mutual understanding is markedly higher than that between Moscow and Washington".

Meeting painfully reminiscent of a scene in the film Dead Season Kommersant

Nezavisimaya Gazeta says the message Mr Blair was bringing was that the US was willing to "forgive Moscow for its obstinacy and its attempts to stage a mutiny together with France and Germany".

'Painful'

The business paper Kommersant saw their meeting at a private residence just outside Moscow as "painfully reminiscent of a scene in the film Dead Season in which two spies, one of ours and one of theirs, are exchanged on a bridge".

"The men start walking towards each other and, trying not to hurry, move in deafening silence, looking straight at each other, not blinking. Because they are professionals."

"Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair reproduced this scene yesterday in amazing detail. Starting off at the same time and trying not hurry, they began moving. A couple of times Vladimir Putin was forced to slow down in order to ensure that they met exactly halfway."

Putin was asking the USA and Great Britain to tell the world the whereabouts of these weapons of mass destruction over which they went to war Gazeta

The business daily Vremya Novostey feels their news conference "vividly illustrated the different approaches, rather than the understanding".

Gazeta focuses on the question it says Mr Putin asked Mr Blair. "Where is Saddam?"

"Where are those arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, if they ever existed?", Gazeta goes on.

"Maybe Saddam is sitting on weapons of mass destruction in some secret bunker and planning, at the last minute, to wreck everything and threaten thousands of human lives? These questions need answers."

"In other words, Putin was asking the USA and Great Britain to tell the world the whereabouts of these weapons of mass destruction, over which they went to war."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.