Obama to seek broad cooperation with Russia during Moscow visit

President Barack Obama wants to produce early results after promising to reset relations with Russia. He hopes to emerge from the Moscow summit next week with clear progress on reducing both nations' nuclear arsenals and changing the way the Russian people view the United States, AP writes.

Obama's pursuit of a new US-Russia nuclear arms pact to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December, has dominated attention surrounding his trip to Moscow next week. The Russian visit will be the first stop in a weeklong trek that also will take him to Italy and Ghana.

But White House aides, describing the trip in detail for the first time on Wednesday, tried to put expectations in broader terms, advancing not just nuclear arms reduction but also cooperation on Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and the threat of nuclear weapons' proliferation. Obama plans to spend considerable time not just with Russia's leaders but also its people, in the hope of getting them to reevaluate the United States.

"It's not, in our view, a zero-sum game that if it's two points for Russia, it's negative two for us," said Michael McFaul, senior director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council. "There are ways that we can cooperate to advance our interests, and at the same time do things with the Russians that are good for them as well."

US-Russia relations plummeted last year following Russia's war with the former Soviet nation of Georgia, and other security issues have served as obstacles, including the United States' pursuit of a missile defense system in Europe and its support of NATO expansion into former USSR countries, which Russia has seen as encroachment.