MOSCOW. (Nikita Petrov exclusively for RIA...

The talks were held in the two-plus-two format with the participation of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and their Russian counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Anatoly Serdyukov. Lavrov summed up the discussion, which lasted for many hours: "Russia and the United States have not yet come to terms on missile defense but are going to continue the dialogue." Serdyukov added that "the sides have not changed their principled positions, although we heard once again what we have to work on."

Serdyukov used the word "heard" for a reason. At the fall meeting in the same format, the U.S. participants made a number of proposals to their Russian partners, which could remove some of their concerns about the deployment of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. But these proposals were conspicuously absent from a subsequent official letter from Washington, which explained the U.S. position. When asked this time how this could have happened,

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