Clinton Administration Trying to Lower Expectations Ahead of U.S.-Russia Summit
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: The Clinton administration is trying to lower expectations about next month's Moscow summit between President Clinton and President Putin. More on that now from CNN national correspondent David Ensor -- David.</s>DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jeanne, hopes are fading among Clinton administration officials of a grand bargain on nuclear arms at this upcoming summit or soon thereafter. The feeling is that Mr. Clinton can't really offer the kind of deep cuts in nuclear weapons that the Russians would like, due to rejections among U.S. military senior officials, and they don't believe that Mr. Putin is going to be able to offer the kind of amendments to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty that the U.S. is seeking in order to be able to deploy a limited national missile defense. So what you are seeing around town is a kind of an effort to lower expectations. The sort of thing that we often see before presidential summits.</s>MESERVE: So why go ahead with the meeting? Can they gain ground on other fronts?</s>ENSOR: Yes, they feel they can. In fact, Sandy Berger, the national security adviser to the president, has just been in Moscow talking about a variety of different initiatives that the U.S. is thinking about trying to propose and perhaps talk about at the summit. The goal is to help Russia reduce corruption, to help it figure out what kind of tax reform, and land ownership reform would really get a market economy going there. The other thing is that, a senior official said last night, that they fear that Mr. Putin, while very popular right now, may have a rather short honeymoon with the Russian people, who are very impatient to see some improvement in their difficult lives. The other thing of course is that President Clinton wants to raise Chechnya.</s>MESERVE: David Ensor, thanks so much.