MOSCOW — A diplomatic drive to ease East-West tensions floundered yesterday after senior American and European officials failed to win a single concession from President Putin of Russia during talks in Moscow.

Secretary of State Rice had been instructed to don her most velvet gloves in an effort to mollify Mr. Putin’s growing intransigence toward Washington. While there were mutual promises to tone down the rhetoric, no breakthroughs were reached on the main issues that had poisoned relations between the two former Cold War adversaries.

Mr. Putin once again rejected an offer of partnership in American plans to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, a proposal seen in Moscow as a direct threat to Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Ms. Rice vowed to press on with the project, which the White House says is meant to counter a missile strike from “rogue states” such as Iran. “I don’t think that anyone expects the United States to permit somehow a veto on American security interests,” she told reporters after the meeting.

Amid a growing number of disagreements, the missile shield proposal has particularly incensed the Kremlin, prompting Mr. Putin to make a series of vitriolic denunciations of American “unilateralism.”

After weeks of vituperative exchanges, the White House — known to be irritated that Russia is taking up more and more room on its crowded foreign-policy agenda — has been keen to cool tempers.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said no agreement had been reached on the future of Kosovo. Moscow is threatening to veto a U.S.-backed U.N. resolution to grant the province sovereignty. Hours after the talks, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported that, in an interview, Ms. Rice had said Kosovo would never again be a part of Serbia. “This is impossible,” she said.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, fared little better in his attempts to rescue what is set to be a fraught E.U.-Russia summit later this week. Hopes for renewed negotiations on an important cooperation agreement between the European Union and Russia spanning energy, trade, and foreign-policy issues have been all but dashed by rows between Moscow and three E.U. states: Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia.