Outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday said his successor Barack Obama should try to maintain friendly relations with Russia after Bush leaves the White House in January.
"I would say that our relationship is still friendly, although I haven't seen him (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) much because there's a new president," Bush said at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
Putin was Russian president for two consecutive terms from 2000 to May 2008, before taking office as prime minister on May 8 this year.
"There's common interest and there's going to be a lot of tensions," Bush said of U.S.-Russian relations.
Relations have been strained over Washington's criticism of Russia's democratic record, Moscow's objections to U.S. plans to place missile defense components in East Europe and differences over issues such as the Iraq war.
In July 2007, Bush invited Putin to his family's oceanfront estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, to try and resolve differences between the two sides. But that meeting and other bilateral talks thereafter failed to put an end to the arguments between the two countries.