Outgoing President Vladimir Putin's successor Dmitri Medvedev was to meet for the first time with top US officials on Monday for talks over disputed US plans for missile defence bases in Europe, DPA quoted news agency Interfax as reporting. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Moscow for two-day meetings with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Anatoli Serdyukov in another round of discussions from October on strategic cooperation and security issues, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said. Medvedev, who won by a landslide in March 2 elections, has promised to follow Putin's course and appoint him prime minister, stumping analysis of possible policy differences and his independence. Ties between Washington and Moscow have come to a head over US plans to deploy a missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic in increasing tensions over conflicting international security visions reminiscent of clashes over the US Cold War policy of containment.
