New York Times - 06.18.2001

 

 

The New York Times

Bush's Warmth Toward Russian Leader Stirs Skeptics

By JANE PERLEZ

WASHINGTON, June 17 - The warm rapport shown between President Bush and the Russian president, just one day after Mr. Bush declared that he wanted NATO to expand up to Russia's border, represented a significant achievement for the Americans, a senior official who helped plan the Bush trip said today.

But critics on Capitol Hill said Mr. Bush was too willing to pronounce the Russian, Vladimir V. Putin, to be trustworthy after the two met on Saturday in Slovenia for the first time.

In Europe, the administration official said, ``the president saying one day that NATO was expanding - and this meant everyone - and the next day it was all smiles with Putin, was supposedly impossible.''

He was referring to the unexpected reference in Mr. Bush's speech in Warsaw on Friday that NATO should try to include Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - a position Russia has held anathema - and the juxtaposition of the two men's genial encounter the next day.

On Capitol Hill, where the Democrats in the Senate are now in a position to put a brake on Mr. Bush's foreign policy agenda, particularly missile programs, there were expressions of relief that the initial overseas journey for a relative foreign policy novice did not go badly.

But there was criticism that Mr. Bush had gone too far.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said Mr. Bush's mission with Mr. Putin was made easier by the fact that the Russian, like Mr. Bush, wanted good news at home, too. ``I'm just happy the president went and didn't make things worse,'' Senator Biden said of the meetings with European leaders.

The public display of warmth by Mr. Bush seemed in marked contrast to the chilly attitude toward Russia in the first months of the administration, when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld lambasted Moscow, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, warned European diplomats that Russia only respected toughness.

Senator Biden, who met President Bush at the White House just before he left for Europe, questioned whether trust was the right word to use about Mr. Putin, a former operative of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence service, and former head of Russia's domestic intelligence service. At their news conference in Slovenia, Mr. Bush said of Mr. Putin: ``I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.''

Senator Biden said that for his part, ``I don't trust Mr. Putin; hopefully the president was being stylistic rather than substantive.''

Another senior Democratic Senator, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who serves on the Armed Services Committee and backs a limited missile defense, said he was struck by Mr. Bush's ``very conclusively positive'' statement about Mr. Putin after a ``first two-hour meeting.''

It appeared that the White House had decided to extend that warmth in a determined effort to reassure European allies that Washington was serious about trying to get Moscow's blessing for its missile program, said Michael A. McFaul, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

European leaders have stressed to Mr. Bush that in their own strategic and political calculations on the missile proposal, it was important that Russia not be hostile to the idea.

But Mr. Bush may well have sent the wrong signal to the hard-line political elites surrounding Mr. Putin, Mr. McFaul said, by allowing them to think the United States is interested almost exclusively in missile defense and not in human rights, press freedom and the Russian Army's behavior in Chechnya.

`'I can understand the strategy on rapport, but it went too far,'' said Mr. McFaul. ``I think there is plenty of good reason not to trust President Putin. This is a man who was trained to lie.''

Mr. McFaul, who was invited to brief Mr. Bush on Russia before his trip, said he doubted that Mr. Bush had casually chosen the word ``trust.'' All the same, he said, it seemed ``like a rookie mistake, saying in his first meeting that he was `trustworthy.'''

One of the most clear-cut policy developments came in Mr. Bush's forward-leaning speech in Warsaw, where he declared that the ``new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and all that lie between,'' should have the same chance to ``join the institutions of Europe.''

That theme expressed the behind- the-scenes work of a bipartisan group, the United States Committee on NATO, some of whose members now hold senior positions in the administration, including the deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, and the deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley.

``It couldn't have been improved,'' Bruce Jackson, the president of the committee, said of the speech in Warsaw. ``The president expressed his vision of a unified Europe, and we can anticipate a major step at Prague,'' the site of the NATO summit meeting in November 2002, when new members will be invited to join the alliance.

Mr. Jackson said the three Baltic nations, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, along with Slovakia, Slovenia and ``one or two countries from southeastern Europe'' were now frontrunners for membership.

While Mr. Putin did not let the NATO proposal undermine the meeting with Mr. Bush, he did express his strong opposition to it. At the news conference, he said of NATO: ``Look, this is a military organization. It's moving toward our border. Why?''

On the outcome of Mr. Bush's meetings with other leaders, there was some uncertainty about what would emerge in the longer term.

``The objectives were modest,'' said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said he sat next to Mr. Bush at a baseball game in Omaha discussing foreign policy just before the trip.

`'He wanted to lay down a foundation with the other leaders in Europe,'' Mr. Hagel said, and he knew that on the most pressing issues of missile defense and the environment he was not going to get instant accommodation. ``Now we will have to see how the leaders in Europe respond on policy.''

In further detailing Mr. Bush's session with Mr. Putin, a senior administration official said no one subject dominated.

In the longer 90-minute meeting, where the presidents were accompanied by their national security advisers, Ms. Rice and Vladimir B. Rushaylo, Mr. Bush raised three broad issues: the future of the United States-Russia relationship; missile defense and the role of an expanded NATO. In a 20-minute session, a larger number of aides on both sides attended.

The agenda also included press freedoms and Chechyna, two issues of interest to Republicans.

An earlier Russian proposal to establish two committees of American and Russian experts to discuss offensive and defensive weapons had been replaced by an American proposal to have officials from the State Department and the Pentagon talk to their counterparts about the issues, the official said. It is not clear when those talks would begin.