Upbeat Obama Opens Talks With Medvedev

Barack Obama opened his first Moscow summit with confidence today, predicting "extraordinary progress" out of meetings set to test his diplomatic skills on important priorities such as nuclear arsenal reductions and the fight in Afghanistan. "The United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences," he said as he sat down for talks with Dmitry Medvedev.

"We'll have a full-fledged discussion of our relations between our two countries, closing some of the pages of the past and opening some of the pages of the future," Medvedev said through a translator. The foundation set now could affect how much cooperation Obama gets in areas in which the US needs Russia's help—chiefly in pressuring Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, but also in tackling terrorism, global warming, and the economy. (More Barack Obama stories.)