New York Times - 06.06.2007

Chastising Putin, Bush Says Russia Derails Reform

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

PRAGUE, June 5 — President Bush delivered a two-pronged message to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday, two days before their scheduled meeting in Germany, chiding Mr. Putin for derailing democratic reforms while assuring the Russian leader that he had nothing to fear from a missile defense system in Europe.

Mr. Bush issued the human rights rebuke on the first day of an eight-day swing through Europe, in a venue laden with symbolism: a conference on democracy co-led by the former Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky. Democracy advocates and dissidents from 17 countries had gathered in Czernin Palace, in the very room where the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was dissolved, to hear Mr. Bush speak.

After a lengthy discourse on freedom as a “moral imperative,” in which he chronicled human rights abuses around the globe, from Myanmar to North Korea to Sudan, Mr. Bush turned his attention to Russia and China, linking them as countries whose relationships with the United States, he said, were strong, but also complex.

“China’s leaders believe that they can continue to open the nation’s economy without opening its political system; we disagree,” Mr. Bush said. “In Russia, reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development.”

It was a more negative assessment than Mr. Bush has made in the past, and in likening Russia to China Mr. Bush risked arousing Mr. Putin’s ire.

The comparison to China was “a pretty significant step at the rhetorical level for the Bush administration,” said Andrew Kuchins, the director of the Russia Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

That was especially the case because the criticism came out of the mouth of Mr. Bush, rather than another member of his administration. Last year, when Mr. Bush met with critics of the Kremlin, he told them that he had concerns about the state of democracy in Russia but would not lecture Mr. Putin about them publicly.

Mr. Putin is already up in arms over the president’s plan to build a network of radar and missile defenses in Poland and here in the Czech Republic, though Mr. Bush said Tuesday that Mr. Putin need not view the proposal as a threat.

“My message will be, Vladimir — I call him Vladimir — that you shouldn’t fear a missile defense system,” Mr. Bush said during a morning appearance with the leaders of the Czech Republic at Prague Castle, high on a hill overlooking the city. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you cooperate with us on a missile defense system? Why don’t you participate with the United States?”

Reaction from the Kremlin was muted. Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Putin “has always appreciated the openness of President Bush,” though he added, “Of course, we cannot agree with some of the things that were said.”

The back-to-back speeches were orchestrated by the White House with the intent of sending a measured, but firm, message to Mr. Putin when American-Russian relations are at their lowest point in years. Mr. Bush has often spoken of the need to promote democracy, and by sounding that theme before an especially receptive crowd, the speech also offered the president a rare escape from criticism over his policies in Iraq. 

“The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs — it is the universal appeal of freedom,” Mr. Bush said, speaking to an audience that included Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, and Cheol Hwan-kang, the author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” an account of 10 years he had spent as a child in a North Korean concentration camp.

“Freedom is the design of our maker, and the longing of every soul,” Mr. Bush continued. “Freedom is the best way to unleash the creativity and economic potential of a nation. Freedom is the only ordering of a society that leads to justice. And human freedom is the only way to achieve human rights.”

In a sense, the speeches may have also been part of the White House strategy to have Mr. Bush clear the air with Mr. Putin in advance of Thursday’s meeting between the two leaders at the gathering of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, in the Baltic seaside resort town of Heiligendamm, Germany.

The two leaders are expected to confront disagreements over Kosovo, as well as human rights and missile defense, although they may find common ground over curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr. Bush has also invited Mr. Putin to the Bush family compound in Maine early next month — an unusual effort by the White House to mend fences with the Russian leader. Kennebunkport is the home of Mr. Bush’s parents, and no foreign leader has received an invitation to visit since Mr. Bush’s father was in office.

Mr. Bush’s approach, however, drew criticism from two Russian opposition leaders: Andrei Illarianov, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington and Mr. Putin’s former economics adviser; and Garry Kasparov, the onetime chess champion who heads the United Civil Front, a political party devoted to promoting democratic freedoms.

Mr. Illarianov warned that the West “does not have a widely accepted and effective strategy” for dealing with Mr. Putin. 

Mr. Kasparov, who is widely regarded as a potential presidential candidate in Russia, warned “If Bush hopes to gain anything by having private discussions with Putin, he’s wrong. Putin thrives in an atmosphere of secrecy. He’s a K.G.B. spy — anything behind closed doors gives him an advantage.”

Mr. Kasparov said that he wished Mr. Bush would echo the much sharper criticism of Russia put forth by David Kramer, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Asian affairs, who delivered a blistering assessment of the Kremlin’s human rights record in a speech last week in Baltimore. “These are the things that must be pronounced by George W. Bush,” Mr. Kasparov said.

But the White House has said it wants to tamp down the vocal sparring between the nations. Mr. Putin has been jabbing at the Bush administration for weeks; he made a veiled comparison of the United States to the Third Reich, complained of “diktat and imperialism,” and warned he would have no choice but to point Russia’s own missiles at Europe if the United States followed through with the missile defense system.

The remarks, in an interview published Monday, instantly evoked memories of the cold war, and Mr. Putin did little to discourage that comparison, saying, “We are, of course, returning to those times.”

But Mr. Bush, standing alongside President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic, pointedly dismissed any talk of a return to those hair-trigger days. The Czech leaders both support the missile plan, and a vote in Parliament is expected this year.

“The cold war is over,” the president declared. “It ended. The people of the Czech Republic don’t have to choose between being a friend of the United States and a friend of Russia. You can be both.”

Mr. Bush left Prague on Tuesday evening for Heiligendamm, where he is to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Wednesday to discuss the major agenda topic of the Group of 8 meeting: climate change. After the meeting, Mr. Bush plans a side trip to Poland — a move that will effectively bookend Thursday’s Bush-Putin meeting with presidential trips to both nations that figure into the missile defense plan.

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New York Times - 06.05.2007

Bush to Seek a Bit of Unity With Putin

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID E. SANGER

PRAGUE, June 4 — At a moment of rising tensions between Washington and Moscow, President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appear likely to use a meeting in Germany this week to focus on the one area where they appear to share a common interest: slowing Iran’s ability to produce nuclear fuel.

On virtually everything else — independence for Kosovo, missile defense and a sharp turn toward authoritarianism in Russia — Mr. Bush’s aides say they expect to have little leverage over Mr. Putin. Over the weekend, the Russian president threatened to once again point missiles at European targets if the United States went through with its plan to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“If part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States finds itself in Europe and, according to our military experts, threatens us, then we will have to take corresponding retaliatory steps,” Mr. Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript of an interview with journalists from Group of 8 countries that took place on Friday. “What are these steps? Of course, we will have to have new targets in Europe.”

Asked about the cold war era of hair-trigger confrontation, Mr. Putin said, “We are, of course, returning to those times.”

In fact, with Mr. Bush headed here to speak at a democracy conference, the countries’ relations are at their lowest point since the end of the cold war, and with fears that the deteriorating relationship could rapidly worsen. Even an invitation to the Bush family compound at Kennebunkport, Me., next month appeared to do little to temper Mr. Putin’s public remarks. 

The White House national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, called Mr. Putin’s remarks “not helpful,” a phrase he has used many times in recent weeks in response to remarks from Russia’s leadership. 

Last month, Mr. Putin issued a thinly veiled comparison of the foreign policy of the United States and the Third Reich, warning of “new threats” that amount to the “same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.”

Meanwhile, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, David Kramer, delivered a blistering assessment of the Kremlin last week, accusing it of bullying its neighbors and silencing political protest at home.

The question at the meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations in Heiligendamm, Germany, and the visit to Kennebunkport will be whether the two leaders can get past the verbal sparring to engage in genuine cooperation — and if they cannot, what the United States can do about it. 

Similar questions were raised a year ago, as the two men prepared to meet at the last meeting of the Group of 8, on Mr. Putin’s home turf in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

“It’s a long way from ‘I looked in his eyes and saw his soul,’ ” one member of the American national security staff said, referring to Mr. Bush’s assessment of Mr. Putin the first time they met, in June 2001. As they stood side by side, Mr. Bush said then, “More than a decade after the cold war ended, it is time to move beyond suspicion and towards straight talk.”

“I think there must have been peals of delirious laughter echoing around the ornate chambers of the Kremlin when the invitation to go to Kennebunkport arrived,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Carter. “Putin has been spitting at the United States for the last year, and what is the reaction? An invitation to a family gathering.”

Some experts say the Kennebunkport invitation was meant to defuse any potential blowups during the Heiligendamm meeting by enabling the two leaders to put off their substantive talks until July. Others say that whenever they expect fireworks between Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin, the pair disappoint. Still, there are no guarantees.

“You can’t be sure,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Putin is on a tear. Day after day he is ramping up the rhetoric. He is in kind of a snarling frame of mind and it may be that he will pick a fight at the G-8, but that hasn’t been his habit. The G-8 mode is good fellowship and good manners.”

But that has not been the mood this past year. Mr. Putin made his biggest statement at a speech at a European defense forum, an indictment of American practices that brought a mild and humor-filled rebuttal from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. 

“There were a lot of negative parts to the Putin speech, a lot of harsh words,” said Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to Mr. Bush’s father and an early architect of the transition to the new relationship with Russia. “But it’s important to read the whole speech, especially the last part on nuclear issues, where Putin listed a lot of areas for cooperation.”

Indeed, both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mr. Hadley, the national security adviser, have pointed in recent days to Russian cooperation on limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Ms. Rice, speaking last week in Potsdam, Germany, described the American-Russian relationship as one of “cooperation and competition, of friendship and friction.” 

But the limits of that cooperation have yet to be tested, because the United States has not yet tried to get mandatory sanctions in many parts of Iran’s financial network, as a penalty for Tehran’s continuing efforts to enrich uranium. As to the friction, Mr. Hadley seemed to throw up his hands at efforts to persuade Russia to accept the American missile defense plan.

“I cannot tell you, for the life of me, why they say no,” he said.

Clearly, the harsh words do not make things any easier, and the administration has been trying to tamp things down. Mr. Hadley said senior American officials raised Mr. Putin’s “Third Reich” reference directly with their Russian counterparts, “and they told us that they were not making any comparison between the United States and the Third Reich.” 

Critics of the administration, including Mr. Brzezinski, say the decline in American-Russian relations is a byproduct of Mr. Bush’s heavy emphasis on building a personal relationship with Mr. Putin, instead of a strategic one.

Mr. Sestanovich, the Russia expert, said that Mr. Bush had hoped he could overcome the countries’ long-standing tensions, but that this became more difficult as Mr. Putin evolved from a leader who seemed like “a determined modernizer” into “an anti-Western autocrat.”

This will be Mr. Putin’s last G-8 meeting, and it will be Mr. Bush’s next to last. As to whether relations can improve, either between the men or their countries, Mr. Sestanovich responded, “Look to 2009.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Prague, and David E. Sanger from Washington. Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Moscow.

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New York Times - 05.31.2007

Rice Clashes With Russian on Kosovo and Missiles 

By Helene Cooper

POTSDAM, Germany , May 30 — The United States and Russia, with relations between them at their most contentious since the collapse of the Soviet Union, openly sparred here on Wednesday at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of 8 industrialized nations.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, accused the United States of starting a new arms race and implicitly threatened to veto any United Nations Security Council resolution that, like the one proposed by the United States and its European allies, would recognize the independence of Kosovo.

Even as the White House and the Kremlin were announcing plans for a rare kiss-and-make-up meeting between President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin, their top diplomats were clashing here in the historic castle where Churchill, Truman and Stalin met to decide how to carve up Germany after World War II. 

This time, the big issue was the carving up of the former Yugoslavia, where the mostly Albanian-inhabited province of Kosovo wants to secede from Serbia. That, along with the American plan to place antimissile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, has pitted Russia against the West in a war of words with flashbacks to the cold war. 

Mr. Lavrov harshly criticized Washington’s plan to build a missile shield over countries that were once part of the Soviet sphere of influence. And he took issue with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for calling Russian concerns about it ludicrous.

“All they’re saying is, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not aimed at you,’ ” Mr. Lavrov said at a news conference after the meeting. “It’s such answers that are ludicrous.”

“We quite agree,” Ms. Rice said with a sly smile, countering that Russian officials themselves have bragged that their strategic defense systems can easily overwhelm any missile defense system that the United States puts up in Europe. Mr. Lavrov was having none of it. “I hope that no one has to prove that Condi is right about that,” he interjected.

Their clashes are indicative of a chill in their countries’ relations. In February, Mr. Putin delivered a blistering speech accusing the United States of undermining international institutions and making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war. 

Russia is also deeply unhappy about the expansion of NATO into the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and about the perception in Russia that the West has supported groups that have toppled other governments in Moscow’s former sphere of influence.

Mr. Bush, Ms. Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates have tried, without success, to reassure the Russians that the missile system is aimed at preventing attack by the likes of Iran or North Korea. 

The tensions have heightened to the point that the two countries have decided to hold a one-on-one session between Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush on July 1 in Kennebunkport, Me. But it is hard to see how that will tone down the sparring, given how far apart the two behemoths are on Kosovo. 

The United States and its Western European allies favor a draft United Nations resolution endorsing supervised independence for Kosovo, where a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 helped defeat Serbian forces. Russia is adamantly opposed.

At the meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Lavrov repeatedly questioned why the United States was so intent on resolving Kosovo’s status when other areas of the world were in dispute.

“Lavrov said, ‘Why don’t we solve the case of Western Sahara first?’ ” said a European official who was at the session, speaking on condition of anonymity under customary diplomatic rules. “He even brought up Abkhazia,” the obscure Black Sea region that has been trying to secede from Georgia. 

“And every time Lavrov said something, Condi would jump in,” the official said. “It was like tennis.”

Mr. Lavrov did not tone down his ire over the Kosovo plan after the meeting, when the foreign ministers held their news conference and most tried to act cordial. He hinted, as Russian officials have before, that Russia would veto any Security Council resolution seeking to recognize Kosovo as an independent country, unless Serbia agreed first, which diplomats said was very unlikely.

“I can’t imagine a situation where the Security Council will approve such a resolution,” Mr. Lavrov said. “Such a situation will not happen.”

A senior Bush administration official acknowledged that the administration, in more than six years, had not figured out how to manage its relationship with Russia. “There are a lot of things we have that are of common interest, and at the same time, we need to push where necessary,” said the official, speaking anonymously under diplomatic rules. “And to be able to do both things at the same time is hard, particularly for American administrations. We either tend to do one or the other, and for this to work we have to do both.”