Obama's visit to Russia a test

MOSCOW — The Russian government has agreed to let U.S. troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan fly over Russian territory, officials on both sides said Friday. The arrangement will provide an important new corridor for the U.S. military as it escalates efforts to win the 8-year-old war.

The agreement, to be announced when President Obama visits Moscow on Monday and Tuesday, represents one of the most concrete achievements in the administration's attempt to ease relations with Russia after years of tension.

But the two sides failed to make a trade deal or resolve differences over missile defense, and are struggling to draft a preliminary nuclear-weapons agreement.

The blend of success and stalemate leading to Obama's visit suggests it is easier to talk about a "reset" button than to press it. The promise of a new era of cooperation was always predicated on the tenuous notion that a change of tone and a shift in emphasis might be enough to bridge deep divisions.

But even with both sides eager for warmer ties, the issues that have torn the two nations apart did not go away with the transition at the White House.

Obama is less enthusiastic than President George W. Bush was about an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe or NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, but has not abandoned either goal, to the consternation of Kremlin officials.

Despite U.S. pressure, Russia has not yielded in its continuing confrontation with Georgia a year after their brief war.

So Obama's first visit as president will be a test of his foreign policy. U.S. officials said the larger message is that if the Russians do not take his open hand, he will move on to other priorities.

But he faces a reservoir of resentment among Russians who believe the United States has rarely followed through on such gestures. Richard Burt, a former U.S. weapons-control negotiator and part of a Russian-American group called Global Zero that is pushing for nuclear disarmament, said Obama must overcome that suspicion. "I just get the sense that the Russians are kind of grumpy, so there's still some sharpness on the Russian side, despite pushing the reset button," he said.

At the same time, Obama faces pressure not to go soft on Russia. He sounded a tough note this week, saying Prime Minister Vladimir Putin "has one foot in the old ways." He is also sending Vice President Joseph Biden to Georgia and Ukraine.

The new transit agreement represents an important step. Until now, Russia has restricted use of its territory for the Afghan war to railroad shipments of nonlethal supplies. Under the new arrangement, officials said, military planes carrying lethal equipment and troops will be allowed to make thousands of flights a year through Russian airspace.

The agreement was a priority for Obama, who has ordered 21,000 more U.S. troops to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida. Supply routes through Pakistan have become complicated by its increasing volatility, while Uzbekistan evicted U.S. troops from a base in 2005 and Kyrgyzstan threatened to do the same. U.S. negotiators just persuaded Kyrgyzstan to reverse itself by increasing the rent.

Ellen Barry contributed to the reporting.