NUCLEAR power and cars that use petrol more efficiently. That would be Tony Blair’s best retort to Vladimir Putin, as the Russian President flew home yesterday.

In his meeting in London on Tuesday with the EU, and in his talks yesterday with Blair, Putin made clear that he intends to use Russia’s wealth in oil and gas to drive a hard bargain with Europe.

To what end? That is the least clear point. This week’s meetings were superficially cordial but tense underneath.

For Blair’s part, he indulged Putin with a gesture of pure theatricality: holding the talks in the “Cobra” meeting rooms, the underground, high-security command centre used by the Prime Minister to coordinate emergency response.

Putin, a former Russian intelligence agent, is the first foreign leader to be given this backstage tour; he would perhaps appreciate it more than most, although he would also be the last to show it. The stunt added colour to the theme both leaders had decided would dominate the day: the fight against terrorism and fundamentalism.

“Russia and the Russian people, like Britain and the British people, know the threat which global terrorism poses,” Blair said after the meeting. But this is a phoney claim to agreement. Each leader says he is fighting Islamic fundamentalism. Yet wherever Britain might ask for Russian co-operation, in practice it will run into a point of sharp difference.

Russia’s crackdown on Chechyna? Not Britain’s business, Moscow says — it is just Islamic fundamentalism. Iran, and its nuclear aspirations? Central Asia? Not Europe’s concern, it says.

Then there is energy. Russia is using energy to divide EU countries from each other. Its relations with the EU as a whole are hardly comfortable. Its deep-seated suspicion that the EU’s eastward expansion represents imperial aspirations turned into vocal anger a year ago with Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”.

This month Moscow has feared that the Polish elections would produce an anti-Russian government.

Even though Putin met the EU as one group on Tuesday, he has preferred to talk to European leaders one-to-one, striking deals of mutual interest.

He has had most success with Germany’s Chancellor Schröder. Despite the political turmoil in Germany, on Friday Schröder will travel to St Petersburg to meet Putin, and will join him later for his private birthday celebrations.

Schröder has helped to clinch talks on the new gas pipeline to run under the Baltic sea to Germany and Britain, in the face of Polish unease that this is an example of “divide and rule”. Poland, not party to this pipeline, will have to get its gas directly from Russia by another route. It feels nervous that Russia could threaten to turn off the tap.

Given Europe’s need for energy, and with the price of crude oil above $60 a barrel, Russia is bound to have leverage. Europe’s best answer may well be the one gaining ground in the US: the hunt for alternative sources of energy. Nuclear power and more efficient cars may prove an alternative.

But Europe might also take comfort. Russia may have leverage, but it does not know what to do with it. It does not quite want to cause trouble for its neighbours, just to let them know that it could.

Britain has chosen not to bring its many-sided rows with Russia to a head — not over Iran, or Central Asia, or Chechnya. There is a case that it should — and that it should work more energetically to glue together the EU position, in the face of impressive Russian efforts to splinter it.

But sending Putin home with snapshots of Cobra rooms and some platitudes about terrorism is a way of keeping the lid on the row, for now.

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