Wednesday, April 20 2005 09:31 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has expressed hope that Vladimir Putin would not seek another term as the Russian President.

"I think everybody expects that since the Russian Constitution prohibits a third term for the President, that President Putin will respect that and he has said it several times and obviously everybody expects that to be the case," Rice told reporters aboard her plane en route to Moscow.

She termed as positive the fact that people are already started talking about running for the Presidency and challenging the President's party.

"I think that is a positive development but, obviously, that would not be a positive development if there were some change in circumstances," she said.

"I don't expect there will be," she added. "We take President Putin at his word." Focussing on what she called "a couple of things that are really worrying" in Russia, she said the Centralisation of State power in the Presidency at the expense of countervailing institutions like the Duma or an independent judiciary is clearly worrying.

The absence of an independent media on the electronic side was also worrying, she said.

However, Rice also noted trends of progress in Russia and said, "We are just going to have to try to help push on those trends that are positive and to try to help to ask them and, in effect, organisations like the G-8 insist that some of the responsibilities that attend that kind of inclusion is that they have to deal with these problems."