MOSCOW: Hoping for a breakthrough, US and Russian negotiators instead ended high-level talks at yet another impasse. The inability to bridge major differences on missile defence, arms control and Iran is the latest sign of a hardening frost in relations between the United States and its former Cold War foe.

One American official told reporters on Friday after the talks that the US still hopes to establish a “virtuous cycle of cooperation” with the Russians. At this point it looks more like a vicious cycle of disagreement.

Broadly, it was a case of two sides failing to see eye-to-eye.

The chief disagreement, spelled out by Putin for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, was over US efforts to expand its missile defence system to Europe. “We may decide someday to put missile defence systems on the moon,” Putin said with apparent sarcasm, sitting across an oval table from Rice and Gates at the president’s country residence outside Moscow. “But before we get to that we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans.”Rice and Gates appeared taken aback — an interesting spot for two experienced officials who pride themselves on their expertise in Russian affairs.

Aides to both secretaries later insisted that the Putin talks — once reporters were let out of the meeting room and the formal discussions began — were modestly productive and not in any sense combative.

Still, the outcome could not have been fully satisfying, with disagreements remaining on numerous issues: the need for missile defence; the terms of a 1990s arms control treaty that Moscow is threatening to abandon; the US push for sanctions against Iran outside the UN Security Council process.

In recent months the Russians have sought to push back. Besides fighting the missile defence proposal, they have continued selling arms to Iran and Syria over US objections, and they have made largely symbolic gestures of defiance by flying strategic bomber missions closer to US and British shores. They also have announced progress in developing a weapon system that could defeat US missile defences.

On a less discordant note, US officials said Putin spoke positively of a US proposal that would allow Russian personnel to be present at American missile defence installations — even inside the United States — to give Moscow more confidence about how the system would be used.—AP