In a wide-ranging briefing at the Pentagon that lasted nearly an hour, US Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, left no doubt that the US and Russia are at an impasse on the matter of US plans to build a missile defence system that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Mr Rumsfeld has just returned from talks in Moscow.
Earlier, Mr Rumsfeld told the PBS NewsHour television program that the US would withdraw unilaterally from the treaty if Russia did not make concessions. He said Russia's "Cold War mentality" was hindering negotiations.
"The United States' position is that the treaty that is concerning us, which is 30 years old, is preventing us from defending the population centres here and our deployed forces and our friends and allies. And that is a real concern," Mr Rumsfeld said.
"And the Russian position is that they want to be free to have us not develop a ballistic missile capability - although they have a missile defence capability around Moscow with nuclear-tipped interceptors right now.
"They're about the only city in the world that has that kind of a ballistic missile defence at the present time.
"But the position that (Russian officials) articulate is basically, 'Look, America, you establish a policy of remaining vulnerable to ballistic missiles while we are protected by a missile defence system in Moscow and while we continue to work with other countries like China and Iran and Iraq and various other countries with respect to proliferating some technologies that are not very helpful to the rest of the world.'
"Now that's an awkward position, it seems to me, for them to be in. I know they make an argument about whether or not it is proliferation of certain types of weapons, but there's no question they're working with Iran on their nuclear capability," Mr Rumsfeld charged.
Sources in Washington, DC said Mr Rumsfeld had joined colleagues in the State Department in sharing a pessimistic attitude toward the possibility that Russia would agree to a mutual withdrawal from the 1972 treaty.
There had been hope that agreement between the two countries could be reached before a planned November summit between the Russian President, Mr Putin and the US President, Mr Bush in Texas.
Several talks are still planned prior to the summit, including a meeting between the two leaders in Shanghai in October, and a meeting in September in New York between the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell and the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov. The list of international treaties rejected by the Bush administration continues to grow.
The US has left negotiations to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; it has rejected the Kyoto global warming treaty, and it is pulling out of negotiations on establishing the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, in Moscow yesterday, the Kremlin angrily denied that the Kursk nuclear submarine salvage operation will be abandoned until next year but navy commanders admitted for the first time that the mission was running behind schedule. President Putin has promised to raise the crippled vessel next month, bringing the curtain down on a disaster that claimed 118 lives in the Barents Sea last year.