Cold war flashbacks in Russia-US talks

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Geneva, the neutral turf that was once host to so much Cold War bargaining, is again welcoming Russian and US officials to discuss missiles, nuclear arms and spheres of influence on the eve of a possible conflagration.

There is a heavy whiff of the 20th-century East-West power struggles in the Swiss capital, a flashback to the tense period between World War II and the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, when the fate of the world often appeared to hang in the balance.