Russian President Vladimir Putin and new US leader George W. Bush said during their first telephone conversation today that they hoped to develop a close and fruitful dialogue, the Kremlin said.
A Kremlin spokesman said the two leaders, speaking for the first time since Bush's January 20 inauguration, had also discussed the case of Pavel Borodin, a former Kremlin aide who is being held in a New York jail cell on a Swiss arrest warrant.
In discussing US - Russian ties, the spokesman quoted the two leaders as expressing the desire to further Russian-American cooperation, develop close and fruitful ties and to find rational and mutually acceptable problems to international problems.
Reuters