HELSINKI: The United States and Russia sent their top military officers to this neutral capital for an unannounced meeting Tuesday to seek and define common ground and to try to move bilateral relations back on track, American officials said.

The meeting was arranged with great secrecy and was the first time that Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had met his counterpart, General Nikolai Makarov, since the Russian was appointed chief of the General Staff this summer.

The two spoke by telephone multiple times during the August crisis when Russian military forces overran areas of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, a development that threatened to rupture relations between Moscow and Washington.

U.S. military officers said the session Tuesday in Helsinki, a city with a rich legacy of hosting numerous Cold War-era negotiations, came at the request of the Russians.

"It is important that we have a dialogue with Russia and sustain a meaningful relationship," said a senior U.S. military officer.

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Italian crisis has Berlusconi riding highGeorgia offered $4.5 billion in aidLeaders in Britain say recession is likelyThe officer spoke on condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol, in advance of the meeting, held at the Konigstedt Manor along the Vantaa River just outside Helsinki.

American officials said they anticipated that the war in Georgia would be high on the list of issues to be discussed. But other topics also have bruised bilateral relations. The recent agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to host American missile defense sites have angered the Kremlin despite repeated statements from the United States that the modest system of radars and 10 interceptors poses no threat to the vast Russian nuclear arsenal.

Senior military officers said that the Russians would be reminded that the missile defense system in Europe was being designed to counter a potential threat from Iran, and that Russian territory falls well within range of Iranian  missiles.

Since the Georgia crisis, Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have spoken in calm, calibrated terms of Russian military decisions and foreign policy. They have challenged the Kremlin to behave better in global affairs but have also noted that Russia's armed forces do not pose a global risk.

Even its series of military exercises in the Western hemisphere with Venezuela and its firebrand president, Hugo Chávez, have elicited little more than shrugs from Pentagon officials, who note that the air force and naval exchanges presented very little that would intimidate the United States.

Mullen's meeting in Helsinki followed his visit Monday to Serbia - the only country in Europe ever bombed by NATO - to seek increased cooperation between the U.S. and Serbian armed forces and a lessening of tensions over an independent Kosovo.

Mullen, the first U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to visit Serbia, described the military relationship between the two countries as "a friendship that has weathered many trials and has grown stronger and stronger."

He and his Serbian counterpart, General Zdravko Ponos, both praised the growing numbers of Serbian military officers attending war colleges in the United States, as well as an unusual program in which the Ohio National Guard trains with Serbian units.

But the two top officers agreed that Kosovo was a divisive issue - one better left to politicians to resolve.

"Serbia and the United States have totally different opinions on Kosovo," Ponos said as he, too, stressed the importance of increasing military cooperation.

Mullen agreed, saying, "On the military side, there is much work we are doing and can do to ensure we have a safe and stable region."

Mullen knows the pro-Western president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, from a previous tour of duty in Europe when the admiral was commander of the NATO Joint Force Command in Naples and the two scheduled a private meeting.

U.S. officials say they believe that Tadic is a force for modernity and closer ties to Europe, but they acknowledge that a deeply felt nationalism inspires continuing anger over the support the United States and some European nations gave Kosovo in endorsing its independence from Serbia in February.

Anger over that decision only compounded lingering frustration over the American-led NATO bombing campaign in 1999 to halt Serbian attacks on Kosovar Albanians.

Under Tadic's leadership, Serbia joined the NATO Partnership for Peace Program in 2006, a stepping stone to full alliance membership. But opinion polls in Serbia show that only a small percentage of the population supports full NATO integration.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/21/europe/military.php