Medvedev sees chance for good ties with Obama

CANNES, France (Reuters) - The start of a new U.S. administration under President-elect Barack Obama offers a good opportunity to repair damaged relations between Moscow and Washington, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

The Kremlin leader, speaking in the French town of Cannes, ditched recent bellicose rhetoric and put a gloss on future prospects for U.S.-Russian relations, two days before flying to Washington for a summit on the global financial crisis.

"I wish good luck to the new U.S. president because he faces tremendous economic and political problems," he told a business forum. "The situation in the world will strongly depend on how the U.S. administration handles these problems."

Russian-U.S. ties plunged to a Cold War low in August after Moscow sent troops into pro-Western Georgia to stop its moves to retake the rebel region of South Ossetia. Tbilisi says Russia provoked the crisis.

Washington has headed Western calls to penalize Moscow, triggering an angry response from the Kremlin which is also annoyed by U.S. plans to deploy parts of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

Last week, the day after Obama won a presidential election, Medvedev threatened to deploy Russian missiles on NATO's borders as a response to the U.S. plans.

But Medvedev said the two leaders had agreed to meet in January after Obama's inauguration.

"The chance to build up a fully-fledged partnership is fairly high in my understanding," he said. "The last thing I, and as far as I understand the U.S. partner, need is to put off such a meeting," he said.

Medvedev, who will also take part in a Russia-EU summit in Nice on Friday, also had a positive message to Europe.

EU PACT

The summit is expected to give a green light for talks on a new cooperation pact suspended by the European Union after the Georgia war and focus on the global economic turmoil and Russia's energy supplies to Europe.

"Our positions often coincide, sometimes even in details," Medvedev said. "I am sure in Washington we will be speaking one language."

However, he warned against excessively high expectations from the Washington summit of the world's top 20 economies.

"The main thing is that the summit takes place and will consider the most complicated painful issues and offer mechanisms to build a new financial architecture," he said.

Medvedev will not meet Obama at the summit -- the president-elect has said he will not take part. But Medvedev's economic advisor Arkady Dvorkovich will meet a member of Obama's transition team while in Washington, a Kremlin spokesman said.

In Cannes, Medvedev also promised that Russia would remain a reliable energy partner.

"If needed, we will make decisions to tap new reserves to supply oil and gas to Europe and Asia," Medvedev added referring to European fears Russia was running out of oil."

(Writing by Oleg Shchedrov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)