Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush won't hold talks in Beijing tomorrow with Vladimir Putin as the Russian prime minister's office had expected.

Putin will meet Chinese leaders and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Aug. 8-9, according to his official program distributed today. Putin's office said on Aug. 5 that he would also hold a short meeting with Bush to discuss the U.S. presidential election, tensions between Russia and U.S. ally Georgia and U.S. missile-defense plans in eastern Europe.

The Russian premier, rather than President Dmitry Medvedev, is attending the Olympics along with world leaders including Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Putin remains at the center of power in Russia since handing over the presidency to his protégé in May after eight years in the Kremlin.

Putin may have intended by appearing before the cameras with Bush to ``show the world that he's still in charge, including in foreign policy,'' said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Foreign affairs are the president's responsibility under the Russian constitution.

A Russian official said today in Beijing that a U.S.-Russia bilateral meeting is no longer scheduled. Bush and Putin may meet ``in the corridors,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.

The two agreed to meet in Beijing when they held their last summit in southern Russia in April, according to a Russian official who attended the talks in the 2014 Winter Olympics host city of Sochi.

Personal Ties

The White House said today that Bush never intended to meet with Putin or any other foreign leaders apart from the Chinese hosts.

``There has always been an expectation that the two will meet, have a chance to say hello, but the president does not have any bilaterals scheduled with any other world leaders but the Chinese,'' Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in an e-mailed comment.

``That has always been the plan so as to keep the focus on the trip to the Olympics and the Chinese meetings,'' Johndroe said.

Putin and Bush are unlikely to have another chance to meet before the U.S. president steps down in January. They built close personal ties during Putin's tenure in the Kremlin. Bush hosted Putin at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and at his parents' home in Kennebunkport, Maine. When the two first met in 2001, Bush said he looked Putin in the eye and got ``a sense of his soul.''

`Difficult Partner'

In May, Sarkozy received Putin during his visit to Paris, breaking with the tradition of other leaders from the Group of Eight club of industrial powers of dealing with Russia only at the head-of-state level.

Western diplomats in Moscow say their governments were taken aback when Russia vetoed United Nations sanctions against Zimbabwe on July 12, four days after Medvedev agreed to punitive measures at a meeting with other G-8 leaders in Japan.

For the West, Putin has been a ``very difficult partner,'' Lipman said by telephone from Moscow. ``There may be expectations that Medvedev would be easier to deal with.''

Medvedev, 42, a lawyer by training, has stressed the need for more dialogue between East and West and avoided the sharp rhetoric of his predecessor. Under Putin, 56, a former KGB colonel, ties with the U.S. and Europe soured over the planned missile-defense bases in the Czech Republic and Poland and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's push to expand deeper into former Soviet territory.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Meyer in Beijing at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 7, 2008 05:20 EDT