Russia shouldn't worry about the US plan to deploy a missile defense system in Central Europe, Bush said ahead of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday.

The missile defense system is "not something we should hyperventilate about," Bush said after brief talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit.

Relations strained

Russian-US relations have been steadily worsening since Putin said in February that the United States had "imposed itself on other states" and that US dominance in the world was "ruinous."

Recently, US-Russian relations have hit a post-Cold War low, largely due to the missile issue and US complaints about democracy failings in Russia.

The US plan to deploy an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, two former Soviet bloc states that are now part of NATO and the European Union infuriated Russia. Russia believes it is the anti-missile system's prime target despite Washington's insistence that the system will merely guard against an attack by an unfriendly state such as North Korea or Iran.

Russia "not an enemy"

Bush said he was "looking forward" to his talks with Putin Thursday and would use the meeting to answer Moscow's concerns over the missile shield.

"I will explain to him once again that a missile defense shield is aimed at a rogue regime that may try to hold Russia and or Europe hostage," Bush said.

"It is important for Russia and Russians to understand that I believe the Cold War ended, that Russia is not an enemy of the United States, that there's a lot of areas where we can work together," he said.

Russia downplays comments

On Sunday, Putin threatened to aim Russian missiles at European targets if the anti-missile system goes into effect.

Moscow seemed to back-peddle from this assertion Wednesday, saying that it was only "one possible means" for Russia to respond. Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the comment about targeting European cities was "purely hypothetical."

Russia absolutely does not want to seek a confrontation or set off a new Cold War, Peskov was reported saying on the German news Web site tagesschau.de.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the meeting's host, hopes to prevent the Bush-Putin meeting from overshadowing the three-day summit so that the leaders can focus on salvaging efforts to produce an accord that convinces the world that the G8 nations are serious about countering global warming.