Bush/Putin Summit - 02.22.2005

AP

Washington Post

Weekly Standard

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Putin Meeting Presents Challenges for Bush

By Tom Raum, Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium - President Bush faces a dilemma as he prepares to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. Does he confront Putin for cracking down on political dissent, or does he emphasize the Russian leader's help in fighting the war on terror?

Russia could be an early test of the pledge Bush made in his inaugural address to push for liberty and freedom throughout the world.

Ahead of their meeting Thursday in Slovakia, their first of Bush's second term, Bush has expressed pointed, but measured, criticism of Putin.

"We're friends, and that's important," Bush told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency. "Vladimir makes a lot of decisions. And I make a lot of decisions. And I like to talk to him about, `Well, why did you do this? Or why did you do that?'"

But Bush sounded less charitable on Monday in a speech in Brussels intended to help reinvigorate the trans-Atlantic alliance and heal the U.S. rift with Europe over Iraq.

Referring to Putin's recent steps to consolidate power, roll back democratic gains and curb press and political freedoms, Bush told European leaders Monday:

"We must always remind Russia that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law. The United States should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia."

Bush also hinted in later comments with reporters that Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, which the United States supports, could hinge on Moscow's commitment to open markets and an unfettered economy.

"This is a tough one," said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins University. "The drift of policy both within Russia and with its neighbors is clearly not to the liking of the United States. But this is probably not the optimal time - when you're enmeshed in Iraq and confronting Iran and North Korea - to pick another fight."

U.S.-Russian relations have been on a back burner during the Iraq war and the U.S. presidential election. During this time, Putin solidified his power, clamped down on civil and press liberties, used economic levers to make his neighbors increasingly dependent on the Kremlin, sought to influence Ukrainian elections and waged a campaign against the Yukos oil company and its founders.

The actions led some to wonder whether Putin was seeking to re-create the Soviet Union.

Bush told reporters he planned to raise such issues with Putin.

"Vladimir has made some decisions that I look forward to hearing - in a very private way, you know - why he made the decisions he did," Bush said.

On the other side of the equation is the reality that Russia has been an important ally in the war on terror and in efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear technology. And as one of the world's major oil exporters, Russia also is a source of oil not tied to Middle East upheavals.

"The (energy) dialogue is, `You've got a lot of it, and we don't have much,'" Bush jokes.

Both men have trumpeted a warm personal relationship begun on their first meeting in 2001, when Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul.

But ties between Moscow and Washington have been shaky since peaking after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Putin strongly opposed the Iraq war. And his rollback from some democratic advances has alarmed many Western leaders.

"He's done some things that has concerned people," Bush said in an interview with Slovak state television.

In another irritant to that relationship, Russia announced last week that it was negotiating to supply Syria with advanced missiles systems, although not shoulder fired ones that could be used by terrorists. The United States accuses Syria of supporting terrorism.

The development came just as the United States was trying to ratchet up international pressure on Syria to remove its troops from Lebanon and as it recalled its ambassador to Syria to protest what it saw as possible links between Syria and the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Washington of Cold War-style power games in former Soviet republics.

"There is still some distrust between the countries, but not at the leadership level," Bush said.

Charles Kupchan, director of European Studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said he believes that Bush "is going to tread lightly with Putin. The strategic partnership with Russia in the fight against Islamic terrorism will pressure Bush to keep the relationship with Moscow on an even keel.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you got a mild statement about the importance of Russia's transition to democracy. I would not expect an explicit rap on the knuckles," Kupchan said.

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Washington Post - 02.20.2005

Talk With Putin Will Test Bush's Inaugural Pledges

By Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer

The last time they sat down, President Bush politely asked President Vladimir Putin about Russia's retreat from democracy. Putin, according to U.S. officials, responded with a testy tirade on Russian history, filibustering for so long that Bush, left with an extended list of other issues to cover in a short private lunch, let the matter go without challenging the former KGB colonel. 

Three months later, Bush will meet Putin again this week, and this time faces pressure not to let it go. The Bush-Putin summit in Slovakia, according to White House aides and outside critics, will be the first test of the grand promise laid out in the president's inauguration address last month to promote democracy abroad and confront "every ruler and every nation" about internal repression with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."

Aides have carved out at least 2 1/2 hours in Bratislava on Thursday for the two to talk privately at length so the president would have enough time to get into a genuine exchange with his Russian counterpart about the rollback of democratic institutions and the elimination of political opposition. Some administration officials have been privately disappointed that the president has not been more forceful in the past, and worry that if he fails to take a tougher stance now, it will undermine the new Bush doctrine of putting freedom at the center of U.S. foreign relations. 

"You couldn't have a bigger test -- it's incredibly important," said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, a U.S.-funded group that promotes liberty around the world and recently downgraded Russia to "not free" in its regular survey for the first time since 1989. "People will be judging what he says publicly and saying, 'Oh, we addressed this privately'; that's not going to be enough."

Administration officials said they grasp the stakes in Bratislava. "Everybody realizes this is the first meeting after the president's inaugural address, that this will be a test, his first encounter with a leader that people have on their list" of world autocrats, said one senior official who insisted on anonymity because he is not an official administration spokesman. "Everyone is aware of that. They realize there will be extra attention because of the inaugural speech."

Yet Bush, who famously declared that he had seen Putin's soul during their first meeting nearly four years ago, still harbors a personal friendship for the Russian, aides said, and he remains reluctant to jeopardize that with a scolding that might prove counterproductive. The administration has just completed a review of its Russia policy led by national security aide Thomas E. Graham Jr. that called for no radical changes in Bush's first-term practice of engaging Putin and promoting cooperation without conditioning relations primarily on Russia's democratic reversals, officials said.

Excessive focus on Russia's internal situation, they added, could get in the way of other important priorities. The administration has been pleased with recent Russian cooperation in pressuring Iran to abandon any nuclear weapons program.

But Moscow plans to sign an agreement with Tehran this week on spent nuclear fuel that will accelerate construction of a civilian nuclear reactor in southern Iran near the city of Bushehr despite U.S. concerns, and Putin on Friday pronounced himself convinced that Iran does not want to build nuclear arms and announced that he will visit there soon. U.S. officials are also peeved at fresh Russian arms sales to Syria.

Russia poses a particular challenge to Bush as a case study in authoritarian retrenchment. In recent years, the Kremlin has seized control of independent television, imprisoned or forced critics into exile, effectively renationalized the country's largest oil company, evicted pro-Western democrats from parliament and canceled the election of governors. Russia's attempts to influence neighboring countries, especially during the recent Ukrainian election, have also strained ties to Bush.

"This is the only country that's had a democratic reversal on his watch," said Michael McFaul, a Russia scholar at Stanford University. "This is the one where the rubber hits the road."

Bush signaled no significant change in his approach to Russia in interviews with European journalists on Friday. For the Russians, he chose to talk with Itar-Tass, the state news agency, rather than one of the remaining independent news organs fighting government attempts to stifle free speech. Accordingly, Bush was not even asked about Putin's rollback of democracy, and the only discussion of freedom came up in relation to the Middle East.

It fell to a Slovak journalist to ask Bush about Russia's wilting democracy in a separate interview that likely will not be shown on Moscow's state-controlled television. Bush gave the same answer he has in the past, stressing his friendship with Putin, playing down the situation in Russia and blandly characterizing it as a question of "checks and balances" rather than using the term "democracy."

"I have a good relationship with President Putin," Bush said. While Putin has "done some things that [have] concerned people," Bush said their relationship means "I can explain to him as best I can, in a friendly way of course, that Western values are, you know, are based upon transparency and rule of law, the right for the people to express themselves, checks and balances in the government."

In recent days, Bush has come under increasing pressure both from the political right and left to sharpen his approach to Putin. Amnesty International, the liberal human rights group, sent the president a letter Thursday urging him to raise cases of torture, killings and other abuses in Russia. The Weekly Standard, a leading neoconservative magazine, posted an article by McFaul and George Washington University professor James M. Goldgeier warning that if Bush does not publicly confront Putin, "then the critics were right and authoritarian leaders everywhere can sleep easy."

The chorus has been growing on Capitol Hill, as well. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) reintroduced a measure Friday calling for Russia to be suspended from the Group of Eight industrialized nations. McCain, who two years ago warned of a "creeping coup" in Russia, said that "the coup is no longer creeping -- it's galloping."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, challenged incoming Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick during a confirmation hearing Tuesday. "When are we going to get tough with Russia?" Biden asked. "The bottom line is you're being silent on Russia. They're bad guys, what they're doing right now."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the committee chairman, convened a separate hearing Thursday on Russian democracy featuring representatives of Yukos Oil Co., which was broken apart in a politically charged strike against Putin rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Lugar complained that Bush is cutting 13 percent from the Freedom Support Act, which assists democracy programs in the former Soviet Union. "President Bush must make democracy, human rights and the rule of law priorities of the discussion" in Bratislava, Lugar said.

Bush advisers said they want to balance the democracy issue against what they consider an otherwise constructive relationship. "It's a very tough one," said a senior official, who asked to remain unidentified, "because of the whole 'freedom' thing and how you balance it. It's a very legitimate tension, and we knew we were buying it when we started talking about democracy."

Moreover, some administration officials said they can hardly afford to focus much on Russia's domestic climate when they have their hands full in the Middle East. "There's still a lot of thrashing about," said Robert Nurick, a scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "There are parts of the administration that want to proceed more or less as before. They're under a lot of pressure. They're not happy, but they don't see any good alternative."

Others said pushing the sometimes-prickly Putin would backfire. "Yeah, it's a test, but I think the Bush foreign policy team is too smart to push too hard on it, because it could blow up in their face," said Celeste A. Wallander, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's just not going to work because the Russian soil isn't fertile -- I don't mean for democracy but for listening to the United States on such things."