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		</div><p>Russian President Vladimir Putin has thanked Slovenia for offering to host his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, but added that the prospect hinges on Washington.</p>
<p>The Russian leader hailed Slovenia, where Mr Trump&#8217;s wife Melania was born and grew up, as an &#8220;excellent&#8221; venue for possible talks with the US president.</p>
<p>&#8220;It depends not only on us, but we are naturally ready for it,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Speaking after holding talks at the Kremlin with his Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahort, Mr Putin said Russia welcomes Mr Trump&#8217;s statements about his intentions to restore strained Russia-US ties.</p>
<p>&#8220;We always welcomed that and we hope that relations will be restored in full in all areas,&#8221; Mr Putin said.<br />
&#8220;It relates to trade and economic ties, security issues and various regions of the world, which are suffering from numerous conflicts.</p>
<p>&#8220;By pooling our efforts, we naturally would be able to significantly contribute to solving those issues, including the fight against international terrorism.&#8221;</p>
<p>In recent years, Russia-US relations have plunged to post-Cold War lows over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and the allegations of Russian hacking of the Democrats in the US presidential election.</p>
<p>In 2001, Slovenia hosted Mr Putin&#8217;s first meeting with former US president George W Bush that led to a short-lived thaw in relations between Moscow and Washington.</p>
<p>A similarly short warm spell early during Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency gave way to new tensions.<br />
As part of Mr Obama&#8217;s early effort to &#8220;reset&#8221; ties with Moscow, the two nations in 2010 signed a pivotal arms control pact that set new lower caps on the number of warheads each country can deploy.</p>
<p>Mr Putin&#8217;s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the prospects of extending the New START Treaty that is set to expire in 2021 will &#8220;depend on the position of our American partners&#8221; and require negotiations.<br />
He would not say whether the Kremlin favours extending the pact that limited Russian and US nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads each.</p>
<p>Speaking in a conference call with reporters, Mr Peskov pointed to a &#8220;certain break in dialogue on strategic security issues&#8221; during the Obama administration, and said Moscow and Washington now need &#8220;an update of information and positions&#8221;.</p>
<p>Mr Peskov denied a report by the Washington Post claiming that Michael Flynn, the retired general who is now Mr Trump&#8217;s national security adviser, had discussed a possible review of anti-Russian sanctions with the Russian ambassador to Washington in December.</p>
<p>Mr Peskov said ambassador Sergei Kislyak did talk to Mr Flynn but the rest of the report was wrong.<br />
While suggesting possible co-operation with Moscow to fight Islamic State (IS) in Syria, as a candidate Mr Trump was critical of the New START Treaty and talked about a need to strengthen US nuclear arsenals.</p>
<p>In December, Mr Trump declared on Twitter that the US should &#8220;greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability&#8221; until the rest of the world &#8220;comes to its senses&#8221; regarding nuclear weapons.</p>
<figure id="attachment_106644" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-106644" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_0721.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_0721.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="436" class="size-full wp-image-106644" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-106644" class="wp-caption-text">Slovenian President Borut Pahor and President Putin</figcaption></figure>
<p>Mr Putin has also said strengthening Russia&#8217;s nuclear capabilities should be among the nation&#8217;s priorities.<br />
The platform of Mr Trump&#8217;s Republican Party had promised to &#8220;abandon arms control treaties that benefit our adversaries without improving our national security&#8221; and called for the development of &#8220;a multi-layered missile defence system&#8221;.</p>
<p>Mr Kislyak told Russian media in Washington that he sees little chance for a compromise on missile defence, as Moscow believes the US wants to develop the shield against Russia despite assurances that it is directed against other threats.</p>
<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t exclude that at a certain stage we may have a mutual interest to talk about those issues, but as of now I&#8217;m not seeing any basis for reaching agreement,&#8221; he said, according to the Interfax news agency.<br />
He voiced hope, however, that joint efforts to fight IS could help break the ice in Russia-US ties.</p>
<p>&#8220;If we have serious co-operation, it could help to start rebuilding trust,&#8221; Mr Kislyak said in televised remarks.<br />
Mr Kislyak added that Russian and US diplomats will start soon to try to prepare a Putin-Trump meeting.<br />
The ambassador has also sought to downplay differences on Iran, saying that &#8220;we disagree more on accents related to the nuclear agreement rather than substance&#8221;.</p>
<p>Mr Trump has accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran and responded to Iran&#8217;s recent missile test with a package of sanctions.</p>
<p>The penalties, however, referred solely to the missile programme and did not directly undercut a landmark 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers that curtailed Tehran&#8217;s nuclear programme in exchange for rolling back international sanctions.</p>
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