U.S. President Barack Obama has canceled the summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin next month for lack of progress in bilateral relations.

U.S. President Barack Obama [Xinhua]

"Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia summit in early September," said White House spokesman Jay Carney in a statement on Wednesday.

He cited disagreements over missile defense, arms control, trade and commerce, security, human rights as well as the fate of Edward Snowden, the American intelligence leaker granted temporary asylum in Russia on Aug. 1.

Russia's move on Snowden prompted the White House to review the "utility" of the presidential summit.

Obama declared Tuesday he was "disappointed" at the Snowden amnesty, despite repeated U.S. calls for his return to face charges at home for disclosing a secret National Security Agency surveillance program.

"I was disappointed because even though we don't have an extradition treaty with them, traditionally we have tried to respect if there's a law-breaker or an alleged law-breaker in their country, we evaluate it and we try to work with them," he said on NBC's Tonight Show.

"They didn't do that with us," he remarked, acknowledging that "in some ways, it's reflective of some underlying challenges that we've had with Russia lately."

"But there have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality," Obama added. "And what I consistently say to them, and what I say to President Putin, is that's the past and we've got to think about the future, and there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to cooperate more effectively than we do."

Carney said: "We value the achievements made with Russia in the president's first term, including the New START Treaty, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea (The Democratic People's Republic of Korea)."

"However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda," he said.

"Russia's disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship," he added.

Obama would press ahead with his plan to attend the G20 summit slated for Sept. 5-6 in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, Carney said.

In his interview with NBC, Obama called the G20 summit the "main forum" for talk about the world economy with "all the top economic powers in the world."

"So it's not something unique to Russia," he said. "They're hosting it this year, but it's important for us, as the leading economy in the world, to make sure that we're there," the president said.

"And when you've got problems in Europe, or China is slowing down, that has an impact here in the United States," he said.

The U.S. and Russian foreign and defense ministers will revive their so-called 2+2 meeting in Washington on Friday, after a hiatus of six years.

"The group will discuss a number of pressing bilateral and global issues, including strategic stability, political-military cooperation and regional issues," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday.

Carney said the meeting would discuss "how we can best make progress moving forward on the full range of issues in our bilateral relationship."

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