country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship," Bush said. Putin also seemed to suggest these two very different leaders had built up a rapport. Echoing Bush he called the United States Russia's partner. Warm words, unthinkable just a few months ago. The Russian leader said both their countries bore a special responsibility for maintaining world peace and security. However he warned that any unilateral action would make that process more complicated - a signal that difficult discussions on NATO and the US missile defense system still lay ahead. At the closing press conference, in response to a question about whether he could trust Putin, Bush said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul." Bush's top security aide Condoleezza Rice later wrote that Bush's phrasing had been a serious mistake. "We were never able to escape the perception that the president had naïvely trusted Putin and then been betrayed." American agenda The following were the key talking points of the U.S. delegation according to Ariel Cohen: Further reductions of their strategic nuclear arsenals; The spread of Russian weapons of mass destruction and related technologies to proliferators such as China and insubordinate states such as North Korea, Iran, and Iraq; The U.S.-led development and deployment of a global missile defense; The consequences of establishing formal regional alliances with China, Iran, or other states hostile to the United States; The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the New Independent States (NIS), especially Ukraine and Georgia; Economic ties and Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO); and Efforts to increase freedom of the press in Russia and focus on Russia's poor record on human rights in Chechnya. Russian agenda Discussions of the imminent threat of Islamist attacks on the U.S. homeland emanating from Afghanistan were held after Putin warned Bush and Condoleezza Rice of the danger. Both of them discounted it as personal bitterness about the Soviet failure in Afghanistan, only to see the September 11 attacks prove him right. Rice later wrote about it in her 2011 memoir No Higher Honour: A Memoir of My Years in Washington: "Putin suddenly raised the problem of Pakistan. He excoriated the Pervez Musharraf regime for its support of extremists and for the connections of the Pakistani army