Washington Post - 06.14.2001

 

 

The Washington Post

Bush May Realign Moscow Relations
Network Could Replace High-Level Panel

By Alan Sipress

In his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, President Bush will propose that relations between the two countries be managed through direct contacts by a network of officials that would replace a high-level joint commission run by Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration, according to U.S. officials.

Administration officials said the commission, which was established in 1993 by Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and oversaw most major issues between the two countries, has proven inflexible and ineffective.

"The relationship has kind of moved beyond that," a senior State Department official said. "The idea was that the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission was going to work itself out of a job and that contacts [between individual officials] would become self-sustaining."

By abolishing the commission, the Bush administration effectively would place U.S.-Russian relations back on the same footing that existed before the Clinton years, a much more decentralized approach involving a broader array of government agencies and officials.

The Bush administration has already begun talking with the Russians about how to establish bilateral groups to address issues of nuclear proliferation and the U.S. plan to build a ballistic missile shield, which Moscow opposes.

Russian officials have proposed two working groups to deal with the nature of the threat posed by the spread of long-range missiles and the future of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which would prohibit the American development of a missile defense, according to a senior administration official. The official said the United States welcomes the creation of the working groups, but wants to organize them differently so they do not become an obstacle to the president's missile shield proposal.

On the economic front, administration officials said the relationship no longer is dominated by the kind of questions that the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission once wrestled with, such as whether the United States would support International Monetary Fund loans to Russia or how to respond to Moscow's calls for debt forgiveness. These issues have become less pressing largely because the Russian economy has stabilized as the result of a ruble devaluation and increased revenue from higher oil prices.

Administration officials said they will propose a two-tier set of economic contacts to address the wider range of issues now on the agenda. The two governments will hold discussions on one level while business executives from the two countries open their own lines of communication.

"A focus on trade and investment calls for strengthening business-to-business relationships," said Alan P. Larson, U.S. undersecretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs, in a speech to American and Russian business leaders this month. "The administration is exploring ways enhanced business ties can improve the investment climate."

He said these efforts must focus on creating legal codes, transparency in business dealings and financial institutions that can support economic cooperation. Also on the agenda, he said, could be Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization and the development of its oil and gas industry.

The administration is proposing that regional issues, such as Afghanistan or the Balkans, be handled on a case-by-case basis. For instance, a senior State Department official pointed to the U.S.-Russia working group on Afghanistan, which has met three times, most recently under the direction of Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and his Russian counterpart. The group recorded success last year when it agreed on a plan to impose United Nations sanctions on the country's Taliban government. Another model cited by Bush officials is the Minsk Group (Russia, France and the United States), which is mediating the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Proponents of the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission, which continued to meet periodically even after Chernomyrdin was replaced, said it ensured the two countries made progress not only on strategic concerns but also on more mundane matters such as health care and science cooperation.

"It sent a message to both bureaucracies between summits that things had to happen," said Bruce Jentleson, who was a senior foreign policy adviser to Gore. Without such a commission, he said, "the bureaucratic agenda is consigned to business as usual. It's not driven by a mandate that has to come from the top."

Bush officials say the commission itself became ossified and overly bureaucratic. By 1999, the U.S. delegation attending commission meetings reportedly exceeded 700 officials.

Supporters of the commission said it also allowed Gore and Chernomyrdin to foster a personal relationship that could later be tapped to resolve crises or issues that were beyond the mandate of Cabinet secretaries and ministers. When the United States grew concerned that no one at the Russian Foreign Ministry was assigned to weapons proliferation issues, Gore raised American complaints over Russian arms sales and nuclear assistance to Iran with Chernomyrdin. During the Kosovo war in 1999, Gore was able to use his back channel to Chernomyrdin to help secure Russia's support for a U.S. plan to end the conflict.

Bush administration officials, however, said they anticipate strong personal ties in the absence of the commission, pointing to a budding relationship between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. "It's possible to develop a personal relationship without having the whole commission structure that surrounds it," a senior State Department official said.