Medvedev Gets Kudos From G8 Peers.

(From The Moscow Times)

TOYAKO, Japan President Dmitry Medvedev won praise Monday as a "smart guy" who is as direct as Vladimir Putin even though his first talks at his international debut at a G8 summit yielded few results.

Medvedev's top foreign policy aide especially sought to stress the positive atmosphere surrounding the president's talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. President George W. Bush, which lasted more than an hour each.

Medvedev and Brown, meeting forthe first time on the sidelines ofthe summit, discussed a host ofthorny issues, including a boardroom battle at TNK-BP, and they agreed to improve relations, whichhave dropped to an all-time low following the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

"We have a number of issues that are outstanding between our countries that I will raise," Brown said at the start of the talks over tea.

In addition to TNK-BP, the outstanding issues include Russia's closure of British Council offices and refusal to extradite a suspect in the death of Litvinenko.

Initially scheduled to run 30 to 40 minutes, the meeting lasted well over an hour as the leaders got better acquainted and shared their visions of global issues, Russian officials said. "It was apparent that neither Brown nor Medvedev wanted to wrap up the talks," said a source in the Russian delegation who accompanied Medvedev.