However, a planned event yesterday at which Rice and Putin were to be photographed together and make brief remarks was cancelled by the Kremlin and a senior Russian diplomat warned the US not to try to go it alone in world affairs.

“The president supported the American side’s understanding that it’s necessary to tone down the rhetoric in public statements and concentrate o­n concrete business,” Lavrov, who participated in the meeting, said.

In o­ne key area, Lavrov said the countries failed to achieve a breakthrough o­n a mutually acceptable solution o­n Kosovo.

Moscow is poised to veto a US and European Union-backed United Nations resolution calling for Kosovo’s independence.

“It was agreed to search for a solution o­n Kosovo that would be acceptable for all, but there is no such solution immediately in sight,” he said after taking part in the meeting at Putin’s residence outside Moscow.

There has been growing transoceanic tension about a US plan to station a missile defence system in Europe, concern in the Bush administration at Moscow’s treatment of its former Soviet neighbours and steps Putin has taken to consolidate power in the Kremlin — seen as democratic backsliding — as Russia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

“It is not an easy time in the relationship,” Rice said about the countries’ relations, “but it is also not, I think, a time in which cataclysmic things are affecting the relationship or catastrophic things are happening in the relationship.”

She said the US and Russia were working together in numerous areas: o­n Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programmes, the global spread of weapons of mass destruction and efforts to achieve Middle East peace.

In April, simmering Russian anger over US plans to place missile defence components in Poland and the Czech Republic, both former Warsaw Pact members, boiled over despite Washington’s pledges to co-operate with Moscow o­n the system.

Russia views the plan as an attempt to alter the strategic balance. Rice has dismissed such concerns as “ludicrous”, but Russian military officials have hinted the system might be targeted.

Last month, hours before the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) allies met in Norway to discuss the matter, Putin threatened to suspend Russia’s participation in a key treaty limiting military deployments in Europe.

Rice says Nato and the US want to keep the conventional forces in the European pact alive but cannot unless Russia abides with its treaty commitments.

Russia views US activity in its former sphere of influence with growing suspicion.

Last week, Putin denounced “disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness and dictate, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich.”

The Kremlin insisted that Putin had not meant to compare the US policies with those of Nazi Germany, but the reference appeared to highlight Russia’s annoyance at what it sees as US domination of world affairs and meddling in Russian politics.