Putin plays down differences with US

MOSCOW, June 6 (Reuters) Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last month compared the United States to a hungry wolf, sought to smooth relations today, saying they continued to improve despite changing circumstances.

''Relations between our two countries are eveloping uccessfully,'' Putin said at a televised meeting with former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

''Of course, circumstances change but the substance of relations is changing for the better,'' he said.

Ties between Moscow and Washington have cooled since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States when Putin rushed to pledge solidarity with US President George W Bush in fighting terrorism.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on May 4 in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, called on Russia to return to the path of democratic reform and accused its leaders of using oil and gas as tools of ''intimidation and blackmail.'' Cheney's comments, ahead of the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg this July, sparked a furore in the Moscow press, and Putin in a May 10 speech compared Washington to a wolf who ''eats without listening.'' Greeting Kissinger at his Novo-Ogaryovo residency outside Moscow, Putin said that a big power agreement on proposals aimed at defusing the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme showed the United States and Russia understood each other.

''Our views do not always coincide by a long way, but we on the whole understand each other, which is the most important, and we find compromises,'' Putin said.

''The last joint steps on Iran show this,'' he added.

The Kremlin leader was referring to big power proposals that offer incentives to Iran to rein in a nuclear programme the West fears will lead to an atomic bomb.

Putin has said that though he values relations with the United States Russia will defend its own interests in the way it saw fit.

Bush spoke to Putin yesterday and expressed his concern about four Russian embassy staff, including one diplomat, who were kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad on Saturday. One embassy employee was shot dead.

REUTERS DKS BST1640