WASHINGTON, Sept 20: US President George Bush waged an allout campaign on Friday to win Moscow over to his hard line on Iraq, calling Vladimir Putin and meeting the Russian president’s defence and foreign ministers.

But there were no signs of concrete progress in either Bush’s 30-minute telephone conversation with Putin or his 20-minute face-to-face meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov.

A day after asking the US Congress to authorize using US military force to disarm and oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Bush strove to win Moscow’s support for a tough new UN Security Council resolution confronting Baghdad.

“The president was encouraged by the meeting. The president made clear in his phone call with President Putin his desire to work with President Putin,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

The Kremlin said Putin told Bush that he wanted to take advantage as soon as possible of Iraq’s surprise offer Monday to re-admit UN inspectors for the first time since they decamped in 1998.

“We agreed to pursue the exchange of views on how to make the work of the inspectors more effective,” Igor Ivanov told reporters in the White House driveway after the meeting.

The Russian foreign minister’s comments further underscored the rift with Washington, which has openly questioned the effectiveness of any future inspections, with Moscow, which says new probes can determine whether Iraq has nuclear, chemical, or biological arms.

“Russia and the United States are firmly interested in making the work of international inspectors in Iraq effective and to ensure in and assuring that this work gives a clear answer to whether there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not,” said Ivanov.

Later, after both ministers met at the US State Department with their US counterparts, US Secretary of State Colin Powell downplayed signs of a rift, noting both sides’ willingness to keep trying to narrow differences.

“I think they are open to hear our arguments and we’re open to hear their arguments, and so the split that has been much spoken about earlier this week I don’t think is quite the split that people have portrayed,” he said.

Washington’s courtship of Russia — like its diplomatic pursuit of France — matters because both of those nations are veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council.—AFP