(Adds "heart-to-heart" quote, background)
By Matt Spetalnick and Susan Cornwell
BUCHAREST, April 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush
sought to salvage his legacy on the world stage on Wednesday by
defending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and appealing to
Russia to drop opposition to a missile defence shield.
Laying out his agenda for his farewell NATO summit, Bush
also pressed the defence alliance to put Ukraine and Georgia on
the path to membership despite French and German qualms that it
could further strain Moscow's relations with the West.
Bush's keynote speech at a pre-summit conference in
Bucharest read like a laundry list of his foreign policy woes as
he struggles to stay relevant abroad in the twilight of his
second and final term.
But with Bush even more unpopular overseas than at home, he
could have a hard time swaying world leaders as they look to
whomever will succeed him as president in January 2009.
Bush is aware that NATO allies have grown weary of the war
in Afghanistan against a resurgent Taliban and its al Qaeda
allies but called on partners to send more troops there, saying
they could not afford to lose the battle.
"Our alliance must maintain its resolve and finish the
fight," Bush said.
The issue of troop levels in Afghanistan, where some NATO
allies have shied away from areas of heavy combat, has brought
trans-Atlantic finger-pointing and was expected to remain a
source of tension at the NATO summit starting on Wednesday.
European critics accuse Bush of being distracted by the Iraq
war, which cemented his go-it-alone image.
With Iraq expected to define Bush's presidential legacy, he
kept up his defence of the five-year-old war, which has damaged
credibility with friends and foes alike.
Bush said a U.S. troop buildup in Iraq had yielded
significant security progress. "There's tough fighting ahead,
but the gains from the 'surge' we have seen are real," he said.
But the latest increase in fighting has increased doubts of
further drawdowns of U.S. forces before Bush leaves office.
APPEAL TO PUTIN
With U.S.-Russia relations deemed to have sunk to a
post-Cold War low, Bush also appealed to Russian President
Vladimir Putin to embrace the U.S. plan for a missile defence
system partly based in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Putin, who will be a guest at the Bucharest summit, has
fiercely criticised Washington's plan, seeing it as an
encroachment on the former Soviet sphere of influence.
Bush again said the missile shield was not aimed at Moscow
but was meant to deter missile threats from countries such as
Iran that Washington considers dangerous.
"The Cold War is over. Russia is not our enemy," he said.
After the summit, Bush will fly to Russia for final talks
with Putin, who steps down in May.
Bush, roundly mocked by critics as naive for saying he had
peered into Putin's soul and liked what he saw when they first
met in 2001, said this would be the leaders' last chance for a
"heart-to-heart."
At talks in a villa in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, they
will try to repair relations strained over missile defence,
Kosovo's independence and NATO expansion.
Diplomats have sketched a possible trade-off, in which
Moscow would accept U.S. plans to deploy its missile shield and
Washington would accept a delay in NATO bids for Georgia and
Ukraine, both former Soviet republics.
But Bush has denied any such deal is on the table.
U.S. officials have said the Sochi talks could yield a
"strategic framework" of U.S.-Russia relations. But the meeting
could also help Bush gauge how much power Putin will wield
behind the scenes after Dmitry Medvedev, his protege, takes over
as president. Putin is expected to become prime minister.
Aides say he Bush is now more realistic about Putin, who
has become more assertive of Russia's place in world affairs and
more strident in his criticism of U.S. policies.
