A SENIOR Kremlin official dismissed Russia’s critics as “nervous Nellies” yesterday, setting the stage for a contentious summit between President Putin and President Bush today.

Mr Bush, with European Union backing, has pledged to raise concerns about the Kremlin’s moves to roll back democracy when he meets Mr Putin in a castle in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava.

But Sergei Prikhodko, a foreign policy adviser to Mr Putin, indicated that the former KGB colonel was in no mood to be lectured. “For Russia, relations with the United States have been and will be truly strategic,” he said. “In such a responsible approach . . . there is no place for nervous Nellies who are eager to bring some objective difficulties, imper fections or sometimes disagreements to the forefront.”

His remarks reinforced Mr Putin’s statement a day earlier that Russia would pursue its own model of democracy based on its history and traditions — and that the summit should focus on security issues.

Mr Prikhodko laid out a summit agenda which pointedly excluded many of the issues highlighted by Mr Bush on his fence-mending tour of Europe.

Under mounting pressure at home and overseas, the US President said this week that he would call on Mr Putin to renew Russia’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

Western governments are particularly concerned about the Kremlin’s abolition of elections for regional governors, its interference in Ukraine’s election last year and the break-up of the Yukos oil giant.

But Mr Putin is expected to retaliate by raising his own concerns over issues such as the US-led war in Iraq, the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and even the American electoral system.

Yuri Ushakov, the Russian Ambassador to the US, told The New York Times: “We are aware of our shortcomings on the domestic front and the challenges we still face in overcoming the multitude of complex problems we inherited from the recent and not so recent past.”

But he said that Mr Putin would bring up “our own concerns about the situation in the US and certain troubling aspects of Washington’s policies.”

Analysts say that the Russian leader is anxious not to appear weak after the Kremlin’s humiliating failure to prevent a Western-leaning liberal, Viktor Yushchenko, from winning the election in Ukraine.

And he is doubly sensitive to criticism of domestic policies at the moment due to an unprecedented wave of protests over welfare reforms.

Mr Prikhodko said that the talks would focus on security issues, on attempts to halt the proliferation of banned weapons, on the war against terrorism and on trade relations. “It is important that there should not be some kind of cross-examination and that we should not say something they are not expecting and that we do not hear anything unexpected,” he said. The two leaders will also sign an agreement on the control of the export of shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, Mr Prikhodko added.

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