President George W. Bush will visit St. Petersburg and Moscow this week for a summit meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Most of the attention at the summit will no doubt be devoted to the reductions in nuclear weapons to which America and Russia have agreed in a much-ballyhooed three-page pact. Such reductions, if actually implemented by the Russians, will make us all slightly safer, though not as safe as we would be if America increased its arsenal while Russia dismantled its weapons. That is, the danger is not the nuclear weapons but leaving nuclear weapons in the wrong hands. All the more reason that it would be a mistake to judge Mr. Bush’s trip to Russia solely by what he achieves or concedes in terms of bilateral arms control. There are at least two other matters for Mr. Bush to attend to on his trip.

The first is Russian transfers of nuclear and missile technology to Iran. All the reductions in the Russian nuclear arsenal won’t do anyone much good if, as the Russians are dismantling their own weapons, their spare parts and scientific know-how are being shipped to an Axis of Evil power like Iran so that it can build an arsenal of its own. This ought to be a matter for Mr. Bush to address in high profile, if only to contrast his alertness to this issue to the failures of Vice President Gore. For it was the Vice President’s fluffing on this front that led a lot of voters to the conclusion that he wasn’t really up to the presidency.

Meantime, the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 19 of this year, “Russia continues to supply significant assistance on nearly all aspects of Tehran’s nuclear program. It is also providing Iran assistance on long-range ballistic missile programs.” Those are two sentences to keep in mind this week amid all the hoopla about Russian progress on arms control.

The second big issue for Mr. Bush to address in Russia is religious freedom. Mr. Putin has been in the middle of a crackdown on Christians who follow Roman Catholicism. Last month, Russian officials revoked the visa of a Roman Catholic bishop, Jerzy Mazur, one of only four Catholic bishops in the country. Bishop Mazur, who heads the diocese of Irkutsk, was also apparently put on a list of persons permanently barred from entering Russia. The visa of at least one other Catholic priest has also recently been revoked, and Russian officials are reportedly trying to expel another foreign-born priest who resides in Magadan

The chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Michael K. Young, who is our source for this information, said, “During his upcoming summit in Moscow, President Bush must meet with non-Orthodox Christian leaders as well as with the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and non-Christian religious groups. Meeting only with Russian Orthodox leaders at this sensitive time for religious freedom in Russia will very much send the wrong signal. The President must also make it clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that religious freedom has to be fully protected in order to build closer ties between Russia and the United States.”

It’s bad enough that Russians would be cooperating with Iran on missile and nuclear technology out of individual greed or opportunism. That Moscow seems to be as frightened of Western-style religious freedom as any Iranian Mullah or Arabian monarch is a matter that begs for reflection. Mr. Putin is supposedly casting his lot with the West. It’s a moment to remember that it wasn’t, after all, the existence of weaponry that sparked the Cold War that everyone is saying is being buried by the latest Russ-American Agreement. It was a much deeper difference of values, and it will take more than an arms agreement to break that divide.