BARVIKHA (Moscow Region), May 16 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday he hopes there will be progress on unresolved Russia-U.S. issues at a meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama in July.
"In early July this year, several days prior to the summit in Italy, we will have a large meeting [with Obama] in Russia. I hope it can move dialogue to a new level," he told journalists after talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Medvedev and Berlusconi met on Saturday outside Moscow to discuss the upcoming G8 summit due to be held in July in Italy. Berlusconi said in turn that Russia and the U.S. have every chance of resolving any issues between them.
For example, Moscow has been at loggerheads with Washington over plans to deploy a missile defense system in Central Europe. The U.S. earlier signed agreements with the Czech Republic on hosting a radar station and with Poland on the deployment of 10 interceptor missiles by 2013.
Russia says the missile shield would be a threat to its national security while the United States has argued it is needed to guard against the threat of missile attacks from states such as Iran.
Russia and the U.S. have begun work on a new treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, START I, which expires in December.
Obama said after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier in May that Moscow and Washington had a great chance to "reset" relations.
The term "reset" has been used on a number of occasions by the Obama administration with relation to Russia-U.S. ties. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Lavrov with a yellow box with a large red "reset" button on it, which she asked Lavrov to push with her.
On either side of the button the word "reset" was written in English and what was supposed to be a Russian translation. However, Washington's translators had made a mistake, writing the word, writing the Russian for "overload" on it instead.
