Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that he expected to establish a "more effective and more reliable" relations with the new United States administration of Barack Obama than before.

"I would like to have partner-like relations, not anything else," he said in an interview with Russian television channels broadcasted on the Christmas Eve, as an apparently strive to warm up the frozen Russia-U.S. relations.

The Russian head of state said he agreed on Obama's remarks that Russia should be one of the top priorities in the U.S. foreign policy, despite the fact that the relations between Washington and Moscow has dropped to a new low this year.

Among those arrays of disputes, the most significant ones include a proposed U.S. missile shield in Central Europe, the eastern expansion of the U.S.-led NATO and Russia's five-day war with Georgia that is seeking NATO membership along with Ukraine.

Talking about the global financial crisis, Medvedev asked Russians to stay calm, pledging that his country will not repeat the misery experienced in previous financial crisis.

"Russia can pay its debts and the internal debt allows us to say that there will be no default. Nor do we expect any denomination. That would be an absolutely senseless thing," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency December 25, 2008)