SECRETARY RICE: I think there is a good chance that the President and President Putin will have a strategic framework from which to work. It has a number of elements and we’ve been going over those elements with the Russians. I would be the last to say that we will agree on every element in it because we clearly do have some disagreements. That’s all right in a relationship this complex.

But one thing that we wanted to do was to go back and look at the relationship as a whole, to see what has been achieved and what needs to be pushed forward. For instance, there is a very important, but I think under-reported, agreement between the United States and Russia which they’ve now associated scores of other countries on global nuclear terrorism. This is one of our great nightmares, of course, that you could marry nuclear technology and terrorism. And Russia and the United States were really – the President and President Putin were the ones who developed this framework. So there will be elements like that.

We’ve had good cooperation on proliferation. We’ve had pretty good cooperation on economic issues. We are cooperating very well on the six-party talks on North Korea, on Iran. We obviously have some areas where we have work to do: on missile defense, on the future of arms reduction. But all in all, while the relationship is complex and while it’s had its difficulties, I’ve always thought that we’ve made more progress than is understood, even as Russia is going through an internal transition that has gone in ways that I think we would have hoped it might not go. It’s clear that Russia’s internal transformation has not been as we might have wished. But that’s the nature of this document and that’s what they’re going to be taking a look at.

QUESTION: Well, there are talks as we speak and there is a briefing at the Department at 5:30 on talks with Mr. Kislyak on missile defense. Our understanding was that because of what you took to them last week with the option of the Russians having access to bases that you all have in Eastern Europe, that they might actually come around. Are they not coming around this week?

SECRETARY RICE: No, I think we have indications that the Russians now realize that we are serious; that these missile defense sites are in no way aimed at them and that we’ve gone the extra mile to put in place really extraordinary measures­ or to allow extraordinary measures that would demonstrate that this is a missile defense system that is not quite, to be frank, the son of the Strategic Defense Initiative of the ‘80s, but rather something that’s aimed at small missile threats: Iran, North Korea and so forth.

You may have seen Sergey Lavrov’s comments a few days ago. They clearly see now that we’ve gone a long way. They still want to kick the tires a little bit and understand a little bit better how some of these measures might work, but I do think we’ve made a lot of progress in allaying their concerns. And they’re not -- they’re undoubtedly not going to agree that the third site is a good idea. They think there should be an alternative. We think the third site is critical. But I do believe we’re coming to a place where the two sides can agree that we’ve worked to and possibly even allayed their concerns about what that site might be.

QUESTION: You’ve gone to great, great lengths trying to explain to the Russians, work with them. The President’s going to Sochi after the NATO summit. Why do you care so much about pleasing the Russians?

SECRETARY RICE: It’s not a matter of pleasing the Russians, Nick. It’s a matter of laying a foundation in what is one of the critical relationships in international politics, to be able to continue to cooperate on areas where we can and continue to disagree on areas where we can’t find agreement. Imagine, for instance, trying to manage the Iran problem without a working relationship with Russia; can’t do it.

Russia is, after all, a permanent member of the Security Council with a veto. That has to be taken into consideration. Imagine trying to manage global nuclear terrorism without a relationship with Russia, given that one of the concerns just a decade and a half ago or so was the potential for nuclear materials and nuclear scientists who had worked on the old Soviet programs being a source of proliferation in and of themselves. Imagine if we’d not had the kind of working relationship where we could deal with that danger.

So whatever one thinks of the internal evolution of Russia – and I’m very concerned about it, you know that I think it’s gone in a bad direction­ or whatever one thinks about Russia’s continued efforts to maintain a sphere of influence in a kind of 19th century way with some of its neighbors, you do have to have, and you should work to have, a working relationship with the Russians that can help you to solve a lot of international problems.