Rice Visits Russia - 05.15.2007

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Visits Moscow

May 15	AFP	Rice dodges controversy in Moscow NGOs meeting
May 15	Chi. Trib.	Rice begins Russian visit as tensions rise
May 15	Reuters	Putin and Rice agree rhetoric must be toned down
May 13	NY Times	The Cure for Chilling Words Could Be a Cooler Temper
May 12	AP	U.S. relations with Russia have gone steadily downhill under Bush

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Agence France-Presse - 05.15.2007

Rice dodges controversy in Moscow NGOs meeting

MOSCOW - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday met civil society leaders in Moscow, but avoided controversy by not meeting with human rights organisations critical of President Vladimir Putin's rule.

Rice, who on the eve of her visit to Moscow had made highly critical remarks about the state of democracy in Russia, told five civil society leaders that Washington had no intention of interfering in Russian politics.

"From what I see, the name of the game is damage limitation. Her message was the United States is here to assist and the United States is not in the business of a new Cold War with Russia," said one of the five, Andrei Kortunov from US-funded development group the New Eurasia Foundation.

The 90-minute session was also notable for the absence of leading Russian human rights activists, including those who have been given the chance to meet US leaders on previous visits. Later, Rice was to discuss rising US-Russian tensions with Putin.

"There was a general understanding that the United States should fine-tune its public statements and be careful in the language they use," Kortunov told AFP.

Irina Yasina, a former colleague of jailed Yukos oil company boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said the five had warned Rice that ignoring Russia's views on the future of Kosovo would fuel "anti-American hysteria" in Russia, Interfax news agency reported.

Meanwhile human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina told AFP that Rice's decision not to meet human rights activists reflected US indifference to human rights in Russia and particularly to abuses committed in war-torn Chechnya.

"Human rights activists have fallen out of the sphere of interest of Condoleezza Rice," said Gannushkina, head of the human rights centre of the rights organization Memorial.

"We don't expect great support from the United States. We'd like to have support from countries that consider themselves democratic and clear statements on what's happening in Russia, but how could we expect that from Bush?" she demanded, pointing to abuses by the United States in Iraq. 

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Chicago Tribune - 05.15.2007

Rice begins Russian visit as tensions rise with U.S. Kremlin growing bolder with criticism

By Alex Rodriguez

MOSCOW -- Amid the worst chill in U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet era, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here Monday for talks aimed at persuading the Kremlin that a U.S.-planned missile shield in Eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia.

Wariness of Washington's bid for an anti-ballistic missile defense system based in the Czech Republic and Poland has spread throughout Europe, but opposition to the plan is fiercest in Russia, where leaders remain convinced the shield could one day provide the infrastructure for offensive weapons.

The Bush administration says that the shield is needed to defend European and U.S. troops based there against a potential attack from Iran. Tehran does not have long-range ballistic missile capability, but it could develop that ability by 2015, U.S. officials say.

Rice's visit Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will also include talks on Moscow's opposition to a UN plan to grant supervised independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Upon her arrival in Moscow on Monday night, Rice met with First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. The agency did not say what subjects they discussed.

A onetime expert in Soviet affairs, Rice faces her most difficult round of talks with the Kremlin since becoming secretary of state in 2005. Emboldened by high oil prices that have revived Russia's economy, the Kremlin has aggressively criticized what it sees as unilateral U.S. policies bent on global dominance.

Some Russian commentators believe remarks Putin made Wednesday on Red Square likened current U.S. foreign policy to the Third Reich. Russian leaders have since emphasized to Washington that Putin was not comparing the U.S. to the Nazi regime, but the controversy follows Putin's speech in Munich, Germany, in February in which he accused the U.S. of recklessly pursuing unilateral aims that threaten world security.

"If I were Condoleezza Rice or President Bush, I'd care that these relations are slipping downward in a very dangerous direction," said Viktor Kremenyuk, an analyst with the Moscow-based Institute for the USA and Canada Studies. "The issue for Rice is to do what is possible to not allow U.S.-Russian dialogue to come to a standstill."

To Kremlin, the U.S. interferes

Speaking to reporters on a plane en route to Russia, Rice called her trip to Moscow "a time for intensive diplomacy."

While she emphasized she did not believe "catastrophic things are happening in the relationship," she said it is "critically important to use this time to enhance those things that are going well and to work on those things that are not going well," according to The Associated Press.

Much of Russia's frustration with U.S. policy centers on what the Kremlin sees as Washington's continuing interference in regions once under Moscow's influence during the Soviet era.

The 1999 NATO accession of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland -- all once part of the Soviet bloc -- was followed by the military alliance's 2004 inclusion of three former Soviet republics, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, and four other countries once behind the Iron Curtain. Moscow also thinks the Bush administration helped fund uprisings in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine 2004 that transformed those former Soviet republics into Western allies.

Moscow is also concerned about recent agreements Washington has reached with Bulgaria and Romania to open U.S. military bases in those countries.

'Underestimation' of Putin

Analysts say ample evidence suggests Putin is prepared to push back, judging from his harsh remarks in Munich in February and in Red Square last week, to his recent decision to suspend Russia's adherence to a Cold War arms reduction pact known as the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. Signed in 1990 by NATO and Warsaw Pact nations, the treaty sets limits on the deployment of tanks, attack helicopters and other military equipment.

"In the U.S., there is an underestimation of how serious Putin and his team are," said Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information. "This team is ready to spoil relations with the U.S. as far as necessary. There are no limitations. Putin is doing this not because he wants a new Cold War, but because he wants the Russian state to be seriously revived."

The latest catalyst for Kremlin hostility toward Washington is the Bush administration's plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The plan calls for 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic.

U.S. leaders want the $3.5 billion system operational by 2012, arguing that Iran could have long-range capability by 2015.

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Reuters - 05.15.2007

Putin and Rice agree rhetoric must be toned down

By Arshad Mohammed

MOSCOW - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Tuesday that the rhetoric in U.S.-Russian relations should be toned down, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

Rice met Putin at the president's Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow to discuss growing rifts between Moscow and Washington ahead of Putin's meeting next month with President George W. Bush.

"(Putin) supported the understanding by the American side that rhetoric in public exchanges should be toned down and we should focus on concrete issues," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Lavrov as saying after the talks between Putin and Rice.

Ties have been soured by Russia's opposition to U.S. plans to deploy parts of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, and by Moscow's reluctance to support a U.S.-backed plan to grant effective independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Rice, who arrived in Moscow on Monday, dismissed talk of a new Cold War despite unease in Washington about Putin's criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

But the disputes, which have driven relations to the lowest point in years, are likely to come up when Putin meets Bush on the fringes of the Group of Eight summit in Germany next month.

A brief Kremlin statement gave no details of the meeting. Novo-Ogaryovo is normally chosen as a venue to stress the informal nature of talks.

Several top Russian officials indicated ahead of Rice's visit that Russia wanted good relations with Washington but would not compromise on missile defense or Kosovo.

Russia says it does not see a threat that requires a missile shield in Europe, and argues that to force its ally Serbia to give up Kosovo sets a bad precedent.

Kosovo's fate may also come up when German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier meets Putin to discuss a growing list of disputes involving Russia and new European Union members that were once in the Soviet orbit.

EU-RUSSIA SUMMIT

An EU-Russia summit on Friday in the southern Russian town of Samara may be clouded by disagreements over everything from Russia's ban on Polish meat imports to its anger at Estonia's removal of a Soviet monument from Tallinn city centre.

Steinmeier conceded on Monday that it was unlikely Russia and the EU would agree at the summit to start negotiations on an ambitious new partnership pact, due to cover trade, energy, human rights and foreign policy.

The presence of both German and U.S. foreign ministers in Moscow on the same day underlines Western concern about relations during a period in which Putin has adopted a more confrontational stance toward the United States and Europe.

Rice is the third top U.S. official to visit Moscow since Putin made a speech in Munich in February in which he accused the United States of seeking to impose its will on the world.

"I don't like the rhetoric either," Rice said ahead of her meetings.

However, she said Washington and Moscow cooperated well in trying to restrict the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, and that their dealings were nothing like the "implacable hostility" between the United States and the Soviet Union.

"I know people ... throw around terms like 'new Cold War'," she said. "The parallels ... have no basis whatsoever."

(Additional reporting by Mark John, Carsten Lietz and Christian Lowe)

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New York Times - 05.13.2007

The Cure for Chilling Words Could Be a Cooler Temper

By C. J. Chivers 

MUCH of Vladimir V. Putin’s second presidential term, which began in 2004, has been defined by his escalating opposition to American foreign policy and his revival of Russian influence.

With criticisms at turns withering and cogent, emotional and petulant, he has made his name in part by presenting himself as a counterweight to the United States and its policies abroad.

He has accused the United States of hypocrisy, arrogance, colonialism, military recklessness and adventurism, and of interfering with the internal affairs of other states.

So when he stood in Red Square last Wednesday, giving a Victory Day address in memory of soldiers who died defeating Nazi Germany, he sent some shivers across the West when he said this:

“The number of threats is not decreasing. They are only transforming and changing the guise. As during the Third Reich era, these new threats show the same contempt for human life and claims to world exclusiveness and diktat.”

Never before had he seemed to compare the United States to the Third Reich, even indirectly, which is what Sergei Markov, a political commentator close to the Kremlin, said he had done.

On Thursday, the foreign ministry told American diplomats that Mr. Putin did not have the United States in mind. American diplomats took that non-apology with a shrug, given the pace of Mr. Putin’s recent verbal attacks.

Lost in much of the din was a public address by a senior American diplomat on the same day.

Speaking in Berlin, Daniel Fried, the assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, presented his own analysis of Russia’s strained relations with much of the West, giving full recognition to the new tensions but counseling just the opposite of hysteria.

The opposing speeches offered glimpses, through very different frames, of how the two former foes are struggling to define the terms of their new relationship.

The current problems, Mr. Fried suggested, should be viewed through the lens of history, then managed methodically, a technique that could presumably dull the emotional edge of any bluster.

“Russia and the West have dealt with one another — sometimes well, more often uneasily — since at least Peter the Great,” Mr. Fried said.

He added that what was needed was sustained engagement, mixed with firmness, to try to help influence Russia during its “unfinished transformation.”

Mr. Fried also made clear that the West need not be fully impressed by Mr. Putin’s ambitious posturing. Russia remains in many ways underdeveloped and disconnected from Western values, he said, and should still be held to account.

“We do not want a weak Russia, but a strong Russia must be strong in 21st-century, not 19th-century, terms,” he said.

“A strong center is part of this healthy mix,” he added. “But a strong center in a state of weak institutions, is not.”

Mr. Fried also called on Europe to stand against Russia’s desire to continue to have influence over countries the Soviet Union once occupied, a reminder that even as Russia complains about what it calls interference in its own domestic affairs it openly supports separatists in Georgia and Moldova, and has tried to bully Ukraine and the Baltic states.

“We should not pay a price for cooperation, nor indulge Russia when it behaves as if a residual sphere of influence over its neighbors is its due,” he said.

The next round in the ongoing struggle begins next week, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to visit that country — in part to meet Mr. Putin and discuss the tensions between the two nations.

Ms. Rice told a Senate panel on Thursday that she was worried about Russia’s conduct both at home and abroad.

“It’s been a difficult period,” she said.

Just how difficult was clear in the amount of time Mr. Fried spent talking about it. In a speech that surveyed the world, with topics ranging from international terrorism to global warming, his call to calmly brace against Russia’s behavior took up more than a third of the time.

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Associated Press - 05.12.2007

U.S. relations with Russia have gone steadily downhill under Bush

By Anne Gearan 

President George W. Bush may have liked what he saw when he first peered into Vladimir Putin's soul nearly six years ago. Yet while Bush was looking away, the sunnier horizon he sought with Russia turned cloudy.

Testy, suspicious and defined by misunderstandings and perceived hurts, the relationship between the Cold War powers has worsened steadily on Bush's watch.

A worried Bush has dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for fence-mending with Moscow this coming week, just three weeks after a similar mission by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Bush also called Putin on Thursday. The two leaders are to meet next month in Germany, and Washington is trying to prevent a diplomatic disaster.

Putin is not sounding receptive to the Bush administration's message that the U.S. intends no harm to an increasingly restive Russia. On Wednesday, Putin made what many took as a veiled comparison between the global aspirations of the United States and Nazi Germany.

U.S. officials point to numerous areas of cooperation with Russia and insist that even a missile-tipped argument over U.S. defense plans in Europe does not signal the dawn of a new Cold War.

"On many things we have done very well, but the fact is that on some others it's been a difficult period," Rice said in Senate testimony Thursday. Rice said the relationship was complicated by a rollback in democratic reforms in Russia and the Putin government's treatment of nearby states.

"Pretty rocky," was the harsher assessment of Steven Pifer, a specialist on Russia and former Soviet states at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

It was not supposed to be this way, not with two leaders who seem to like one another, generally good economic times in both countries and converging interests in the fight against terrorism. Rice, Bush's longtime top foreign affairs adviser, is even a specialist on Russia and a fluent Russian speaker.

"I am sure that she is disappointed _ everybody on a senior level in the State Department is disappointed," said Soviet-born Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center in Washington. "They have every right to be disappointed. I am quite disappointed myself."

Perhaps Rice, of all people, should have seen the deterioration coming. But she, like the rest of the administration, became preoccupied with terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed.

The chumminess between Bush and Putin was regarded as a foreign policy bright spot, but the underlying relationship between the two countries was a relatively low priority.

"With everything going on in Iraq, with Iran, North Korea, at that level at some point you run out of time," Pifer said. "It's a question of bandwidth."

Russia and the U.S. talk past each other on the basic issues that divide them.

The U.S. looks at Putin's consolidation of power and sees a dangerous retrenchment on basic democratic principles. Russia tunes out the lecture from a world power it considers overbearing and hypocritical.

The U.S. is unnerved by Russia's growing energy wealth, its use of energy as a political cudgel and centralization of the once entrepreneurial energy sector. Russian leaders see their return ticket to world relevance.

In fact, on Saturday, the leaders of Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan reached a landmark pipeline deal that will strengthen Moscow's control over Central Asia's energy export routes. The agreement sets back U.S. and European efforts to secure alternatives to Middle East oil and gas that would be independent from Russian influence.

The U.S. sees its plan to station missiles and interceptors at bases in Poland and the Czech Republic as a strategic bulwark against a potential threat from Iran, especially if Iran gains nuclear weapons. Russia sees the breaking of promises it thought it had exacted from the West and unacceptable U.S. encroachment on its doorstep.

As Putin enters what is probably the last year of his presidency, he has become more defiant of international pressure and more willing to challenge the U.S. and Europe.

"President Putin thinks the United States has been weakened by Iraq and that he has been strengthened by recent events and high-priced oil," former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said. "He is trying to put Russia back on the international map."

The U.S. has tried to lower the temperature, in large part because it needs Russia's cooperation in international negotiations or confrontations with Iran and North Korea, and on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Russia is likely to cooperate only so far as it sees its own interests served.

"The whole idea going into the U.S.-Russian relationship in the early part of the administration is, how can two great powers work together on issues of mutual concern and common interest?" State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

"That's still true, but also in great power relationships you are going to see differences. Where you are not compromising on principle you narrow those differences, and in some cases you need to agree to disagree."

EDITOR'S NOTE Anne Gearan covers diplomacy and foreign affairs for The Associated Press.

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