MOSCOW, July 12: Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a keynote address on Monday that he was seeking to build ties with Washington but that full trust could only develop with more investments from the United States.

He pointed to Germany, France and Italy as countries that have "displayed a real interest in closer relations" with Russia. Berlin, Paris and Moscow forged an axis that strongly opposed last year's US-led war against Iraq and Putin has close personal ties with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Putin also told some 130 of Moscow's ambassadors assembled in the foreign ministry that he wanted them to push harder for free travel for Russian citizens abroad - one of the main stumbling blocks in European relations - and entry into the World Trade Organization.

The speech was his second to the ambassadors in two years and has turned into something of a benchmark for gauging Russia's future global intentions. He used the first to attack his envoys for failing to promote Russia's image abroad. He briefly touched on the same theme on Monday.

But some of his most specific remarks concerned the United States. "Relations with the United States require constant attention," Putin said. "We have objective reasons to believe that we can establish a long-term partnership based on a mutual respect of each other's interests, constructive dialogue and predictability," Putin said.

Yet he said relations with Washington - which have grown closer since the September 11 attacks but then cooled amid disputes over Iraq - could only be built with new investments.

"The widest circle of American society must be interested in constructive and friendly relations with Russia. And this of course includes business." Russia has long tried to play a balancing act between Asia and the West as it tries to establish a post-Soviet international relations policy.

Former president Boris Yeltsin pushed for a "multi-polar" world - one that would not only focus on Washington's wishes but also see closer ties between Russia and nearby giants China and India as a counterweight to the United States.

Putin - who at one stage broke ranks with Russia's diplomatic establishment to support the US campaign in Afghanistan - returned to the Asian theme on Monday, saying there were "great opportunities" in relations with China and India.

The president, whose regime has been sharply criticized for a crackdown on media freedoms and more recently on its campaign against Yukos, the oil giant run by a Putin foe that now faces bankruptcy, again voiced frustration with Russia's image abroad.

He grumbled to the ambassadors that "the image of Russia in your countries often does not correspond to reality. "Frequently, we see campaigns to discredit our country's image that clearly damage both the state and our local business."

Putin urged his diplomats to start presenting "an objective picture" of Russia abroad. "We were instructed to defend Russia's interests, not through confrontation but through a search for compromises," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after Putin's address.

Meanwhile, Putin sought to paint a picture of Russia as a friendly neighbour, even though Moscow and Washington have long been rivals for influence in former Soviet republics that have lucrative energy supplies and oil and gas pipelines. "What we should not do is to declare that no one but Russia has a right to leadership in the former Soviet republics," Mr Putin acknowledged. -AFP