by Wei Jing

    WASHINGTON, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Roughly one week before Barack Obama is to depart for his first trip to Russia as President of the United States, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia James Collins admits his expectations for the Obama-Medvedev summit are "measured".

    "The most important issue, really, is whether or not this meeting will set U.S. and Russia on a new and better course," Collins told Xinhua.

    That cautious calculation contrasts with the Obama administration's ambitious goal of "resetting" U.S.-Russia relations when Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev held their first summit on April 1 in London.

    Three months after that meeting, American and Russian positions on a number of issues are not closer, if not further away, from where they stood before.

    Among topics the two presidents are set to discuss, Collins believes the priorities are about a new Strategic Arms Reduction Agreement that would further cut the number of nuclear warheads in each country's arsenals -- a subject President Obama cared about when he was a senator.

    But since Russian President Medvedev had signaled as recently as June 20 to link the arms reduction issue with the U.S. plan to install missile defense capabilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, Collins is not sure how much both sides can achieve during the July summit.

    He believes both countries should agree on the further-reduced number of nuclear weapons each side can keep -- probably 1500 on each side -- then worry about other details in follow-up negotiations.

    Since the current START agreement runs out on Dec. 5 of this year, Collins said the two sides will have to work out an arrangement "one way or another" to maintain their credibility under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

    Obama arrives on the day that Russian troops will conclude a large scale military exercise on the Georgian border, a spot of tension and sensitivity between the United States and Russia since last summer's brief Russia-Georgia conflict.

    Although the U.S. has just completed the legislative process to provide 1 billion dollars in assistance to Georgia, Collins said Georgia and

    Ukraine's NATO membership, an issue that was important to the U.S. side a year ago, "simply is not now going to be the foremost point on the agenda".

    He expects Obama and Medvedev to discuss how to "better manage" the issue, while giving time to the former Soviet republics to sort out their own problems.

    Compared to the Caucasus, Iran and the Middle East may be of bigger concern for both leaders.

    Collins sees U.S. reaction to the result of Iranian election push the United States and Russia further apart on how to deal with an Iran with nuclear ambitions. But he said U.S. officials understand that "Russia is a key player on Iran. That has not changed."

    A long-time Russia scholar who taught Russian history at the U.S. Naval Academy, Collins notices one difference in this U.S. administration that sets it apart from all previous administrations when it comes to U.S.-Russia relations, and that is that President Obama is a "truly post Cold War president".

    He thinks this personal tribute is very important because Obama "didn't start (his political career) with a vocabulary or a way of thinking about the world that presumed was divided into East and West ... It's just not the world he has known".

    This plus Obama's willingness to listen to different opinions, Collins believes it represents a "generational change" in how this White House deals with world affairs.

    Collins said Obama's Russian counterpart is from a similar generation. "Let's hope he has a similar frame of mind," he said.