In his three years in office, President Vladimir Putin has aggressively pursued a leading international role for himself and Russia. He's cast himself alternately as a tough negotiator, a trustworthy confidant and a mediator between irreconcilable camps.
This week, Putin will play a showman serving up an extravagant tribute to his native city on the 300th anniversary of its founding -- and a sales pitch for Russia to become a full-fledged member of the great-power club, the G8.
"Putin will try to strengthen his colleagues' opinion on Russian reform ... to persuade his colleagues that this process is real, so that Russia can become a full-fledged member of the Group of Eight within the next few years," predicted Vladislav Belov of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Europe.
Putin will make his pitch to more than 40 other world leaders against the baroque grandeur of St. Petersburg, the European-oriented city founded by one of his idols, Czar Peter the Great. The leaders are to meet during the city's 300th birthday celebration Friday.
Like Peter, Putin has tried to put Russia firmly in the European camp, forging close personal ties with leaders such as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with US President George W. Bush.
"For the president, it was important to turn this holiday, St. Petersburg's 300th birthday, into a symbol of Russia's new turn to the West and that's why it's being met with so much ceremony," said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor in chief of the quarterly Russia in Global Affairs.
Russia was invited to sit at the same table as the world's richest industrial nations in 1997 when former US president Bill Clinton extended an invitation to then-president Boris Yeltsin to attend a G7 summit, as a bid to soften Russia's objection to NATO expansion.
Russia initially used the meetings to plead for economic aid, but gradually Moscow became more integrated into the group, which began calling itself the G8 and shifting its focus from economic issues to covering broader political matters. But Moscow has remained something of a distant relation because its economy is far smaller than those of the other countries and its democracy less developed.
In a mid-May speech before Russia's two houses of parliament, Putin set out some of the tasks facing Russia to achieve its goal of gaining power within the G8. In addition to Russia, the G8 members include the US, France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Such tasks include doubling the nation's GDP over the next decade, achieving full currency convertibility for the ruble and slashing the bureaucracy and restoring military might.
Putin also said his government was committed to ending its nearly four-year war in Chechnya, which has been one of the most divisive issues between Russia and Western Europe.
"From his own lips, they should hear that this isn't all empty soap bubbles, but that (the change) occurring in Russia is real," Belov said.
Putin has said he wants Saturday's Russia-EU summit to focus on an initiative to bring together the EU and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) -- which includes most of the former Soviet republics -- in a common market.
That's a long-term prospect, at best, since none of the CIS countries are members of the World Trade Organization and only Russia among them has received market-economy status from the EU.
His Sunday summit with Bush will be a fence-mending session to put their countries back on track toward the strategic partnership they declared before they split over the Iraq war.
"Since US-Russian relations at this point are still based on the personal ties between Putin and Bush, it's important that they look one another in the eye as they like to do, and on the personal level confirm that they remain friends," Lukyanov said.
The US and Russian leaders are expected to trade congratulations over the ratification of an arms control treaty that will cut each side's nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, and discuss Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran, a country Washington alleges is dangerously close to a nuclear weapons capability.
Both meetings are so short that few expect any concrete results.
Yet as the first major international conclave since the Iraq war, the pomp-filled birthday party could still serve a substantial purpose: breaking the ice between G8 leaders, particularly Bush and Chirac, who have fallen out bitterly over the Iraq war.
From St. Petersburg, the G8 leaders move on to Evian, France for a summit focusing on tightening cooperation against terrorism, restoring confidence in financial markets and offering aid to Africa.
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