White House Blames China, Russia for Syrian Peace Failure

The White House blamed Russia and China today for the failure of Kofi Annan’s peace mission inSyria.

Annan formally announced today he would step down as special envoy to Syria at the end of the month. Despite his intense diplomatic efforts over the last year, including trips to Syria and constant contact with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his mission failed to halt the bloodshed in Syria. Instead the conflict is increasing with an all-out battle now developing over Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Annan’s efforts were disrupted by the break of international unity against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

By Matthew Larotonda | ABC OTUS News

Kofi Annan, Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria, speaks during a press briefing, at the European headquarters of the United Nations, UN, in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday Aug. 2, 2012. Annan is stepping down as UN Arab League mediator in the 17-month-old Syria conflict at the end of the month, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said in a statement on Thursday. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini)

“Annan’s resignation highlights the failure of the United Nations Security Council, of Russia and China, to support resolutions – gainful resolutions – that would have held Assad accountable for his failure to abide by his commitments under the Annan plan,” Carney said.

While thanking Annan for his service, America’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice also primarily blamed the Security Council for the failure of Annan’s mission. Russia and China have vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that called for tougher actions against the Assad regime three times.

“When the Security Council failed to heed Mr. Annan’s repeated calls for collective and significant consequences for non-compliance with its prior resolutions, those members who blocked this action effectively made Mr. Annan’s mission impossible,” said Rice in a statement.

But in an op-ed to the Financial Times, Annan blamed Russia, China as well as the U.S. and its allies. He said that both sides became too entrenched in their positions.

“It takes leadership to compromise to overcome the destructive lure of national rivalries,” said Annan. “Joint action requires bilateral and collective efforts by all countries with influence over the actors on the ground in Syria, to press upon the parties that a political solution is essential.”

He advised that for a peaceful solution to the bloodshed Russia, China and Iran have to persuade Syria’s leadership to “change course and embrace a political transition.”

He didn’t explicitly call for Assad to step down but said, “The current government has lost all legitimacy.”

Annan also agreed with the U.S. position that the first move must be made by the government to accept his six point peace plan which includes ending the violence and beginning a political transition.

But Annan also had advice for the United States and its allies about what they need to do to have peace in Syria, saying that they have to press the opposition to “embrace a fully inclusive political process,” a process that will include elements of the Assad regime.

“This also means recognizing that the future of Syria rises and falls on more than the fate of just one man,” said Annan.

The diplomatic meltdown of Annan’s resignation came as the White House announced it was pledging another $12 million in humanitarian aid for Syrian civilians.

A White House official told ABC News the timing of the humanitarian aid announcement was not related to Annan’s removal, or Wednesday’s Reuters report that President Obama had signed a secret order authorizing the CIA and other agencies to provide support to rebels against the Bashar Assadregime.

The newest U.S. pledge focuses on humanitarian aid to the conflict-ridden country, and brings the total U.S. assistance to Syria to $76 million. The aid is partly distributed through the World Food Program, International Red Cross, and other organizations.

Over 130,000 have fled to neighboring states during its violent uprising and government crackdown. The U.N. has asked for $180 million in international assistance for the country.

The White House has declined to comment on the Reuters report, but while the precise date and nature of President Obama’s order to give non-lethal assistance to Syria’s opposition is undetermined, it comes on the heels of observations of a marked improvement in effectiveness by the armed opposition, and stops short of providing arms.

On Wednesday the State Department acknowledged $25 million had been set aside for “non lethal” assistance to the fighters, such as communications equipment.

Today Carney said, “We don’t believe that adding to the number of weapons in Syria will do anything to help bring about a peaceful transition.”

Read the rest:

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-blames-china-russia-syrian
-peace-failure-205153431–abc-news-politics.html

Putin: Vietnam worse than Stalin purges

By Douglas Birch, Associated Press

MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin said Thursday no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about the Great Purge of 1937, saying it may have been one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era but “in other countries even worse things happened.”

Vladimir Putin

Speaking at a televised meeting with social studies teachers, Putin noted that this is the 70th anniversary of a year many Russians regard as a synonym for state-sponsored terror. It is an anniversary that has, however, gotten relatively little attention in Russian media.

“Yes, we had terrible pages” in Russia’s history, Putin said. “Let us recall the events since 1937, let us not forget that. But in other countries, it has been said, it was more terrible.”

Russia should never forget the abuses of the Communist era, Putin said. But he also said no one had the right to make Russia feel guilty about those abuses.

“No one must be allowed to impose the feeling of guilt on us,” he said. “Let them think about themselves. But we must not and will not forget about the grim chapters in our history.”

Political arrests on dubious charges were common throughout Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s rule, resulting in the execution of hundreds of thousands of Russians. Millions more became inmates of the gulag, the Soviet system of thousands of slave labor camps.

Large-scale arrests of Communist Party members began in 1934 and seemed to reach a crescendo in 1936-37, when a series of show trials was held in Moscow featuring dramatic courtroom confessions.

Thousands of bureaucrats, military officers and party officials were rounded up and imprisoned by the NKVD, one of the predecessor agencies to the KGB. Many were shot after secret trials.

Russia has never sought to bring to justice KGB officials implicated in human rights abuses committed during the Communist era. Putin, a proud alumnus of the KGB, headed its main successor organization, the Federal Security Service, in the late 1990s.

Speaking with the teachers, Putin suggested the United States’ use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II was worse than the abuses of Stalin. He also cited the U.S. bombing campaign and use the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

“We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population,” he said. “We have not sprayed thousands of kilometers (miles) with chemicals, (or) dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic (War)” — Russia’s name for World War II.

“We had no other black pages, such as Nazism, for instance,” he said.

His remarks came just over a week after President Bush unveiled a monument to the victims of communism in Washington. At the ceremony, Bush compared those totalitarian regimes to modern terror groups.

Putin said he regretted some of Russia’s history textbooks had been written using grants from foreign groups, implying foreign governments were dictating how Russian history should be told. Textbook authors “dance to the polka that others have paid for,” he said.

In recent years, the Kremlin has cracked down on the operations of foreign non-governmental organizations, saying some were pursuing political agendas.

N. Korea delays U.N. inspectors

By Nicholas Kralev
The Washington Times
June 22, 2007

North Korea yesterday put on hold a planned visit to Pyongyang by U.N. nuclear inspectors just hours after top U.S. negotiator Christopher R. Hill touched down in Pyongyang — the first senior Bush administration official to visit the reclusive communist state in nearly five years.

“We hope that we can make up for some of the time that we lost this spring, and so I’m looking forward to good discussions about that. We want to get the six-party process moving,” Mr. Hill said as he arrived.
 

U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher R. Hill in Pyongyang yesterday said he wanted to restart the six-party talks.

The administration had until recently refused to talk directly to Pyongyang, saying it did not trust Kim Jong-il and accused his government of trying to extort rewards in negotiations to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.
But the State Department yesterday portrayed Mr. Hill’s visit as a natural step for the U.S.

“Talking and dialogue is not a reward,” spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. “It’s a part of the process. It’s part of what you do in diplomacy.”

The visit, marking the latest U.S. attempt to woo North Korea back to six-nation talks after a two-year hiatus, met an obstacle yesterday.

Mr. Hill left Pyongyang early today for Seoul, where he was scheduled to brief South Korean officials. He also was to continue on to Tokyo to deliver a similar briefing.

In delaying the U.N. inspectors’ visit, North Korea aid it had not received $25 million from a Macao bank, which U.S., Macanese and Russian officials claimed had been transferred at least a week ago.

“Our side has informed the IAEA that we have no objection to them preparing the visit as a plan, but we are not ready to give our official confirmation for the visit as scheduled by the agency,” said diplomat Hyon Yong-man at the North Korean Embassy in Vienna, Austria, where the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based.

Mr. McCormack said he had seen the reports about the delay of a visit by IAEA inspectors but could not confirm them through official channels.

North Korea has boycotted the talks since 2005, when the U.S. Treasury Department froze North Korean funds at Banco Delta Asia in Macao, claiming they were tainted by drug running, money laundering and counterfeiting.

The North has since kicked out IAEA inspectors and detonated a nuclear device in an underground test. Its single nuclear reactor continues to run, processing fuel for atomic bombs.

In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislyak said yesterday the $25 million was being transferred to a Russian bank where the North has accounts “as we speak” and “everything is normal.”

The Washington Times reported last month that a trip by Mr. Hill was likely to take place soon, despite recent statements by Mr. Hill that he would not go until the nuclear reactor had been shut down.

The six nations — the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, Russia and North Korea — signed an agreement in February to begin dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons programs in exchange for political and economic rewards, provided the frozen Macao funds were freed up.

Mr. Hill’s trip had been approved not only by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Cheney has been skeptical of Miss Rice’s accommodating approach to North Korea.

Mr. McCormack said Mr. Hill flew to Pyongyang yesterday morning on a U.S. government plane from Tokyo.

The envoy held talks with his counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan. Mr. McCormack said Mr. Hill would meet with Kim Jong-il if such a visit could be arranged.

Russia’s Putin and His State of Mind

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
June 11, 2007

The reasons behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly hostile attitude toward the Bush administration are becoming clearer. To understand them in their proper context, imagine the United States and its allies had lost the Cold War. NATO has collapsed.
    
Next thing we know capitalism collapses, along with America’s two political parties. In their place springs a one-party system, known as USA, which now stands for United Socialists of America.
    
As we lick our military, diplomatic and psychological wounds, Canada and Mexico follow our former European allies into the Warsaw Pact. France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain and the Benelux countries join COMECON, the Warsaw Pact equivalent of the now defunct European Economic Community. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) folds and is replaced by INTER-ARTA (Inter-American Regulated Trade Association). Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela become charter members.
    
The Soviet leader — Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin or Mr. Putin — then embarks on a triumphant tour of the former NATO capitals, including Ottawa and Mexico City, now full-fledged Warsaw Pact allies.
    
Soviet hubris has led the world’s most powerful nation to punish a recalcitrant dictator in the Middle East, say, Iraq. The men in the Kremlin decide to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, roping in key satellites in a coalition of the unwilling. Oblivious to local tribal and sectarian forces, Soviet and coalition forces find themselves bogged down in another Afghanistan.
    
When the Soviet leader first met with his new counterpart in the White House, he stared into his soul and liked what he saw: an American socialist who could be trusted. But now that the Russian imperialist was bogged down in Iraq, the USA president was beginning to enjoy his discomfiture. He then went on to criticize the Kremlin leader for the biggest blunder in the history of socialism. The Russian’s ratings plummeted to single digits.
    
Now back to reality. Mr. Putin is savoring President Bush’s predicament and piling on. His paranoid military had briefed him on the anti-missile system the U.S. wants to install in Poland and the Czech Republic as a deterrent to hostile nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles. From what his intelligence tells him, Iran is so far behind in producing a nuclear weapon, let alone one that can be miniaturized and fitted into the nose cone of a Shahab-4 missile, that the Americans must have an ulterior motive.
    
A copy of North Korea’s No-Dong 2 missile, the latest Shahab-4, or Shooting Star, would have a range of about 1,500 kilometers (900 miles), which would threaten Israel, Jordan and all the Gulf countries, but not Europe.
    
Mr. Putin, after listening to his military and intelligence services, decided to rattle the Europeans by snarling at Mr. Bush. This could produce a little more daylight between Washington and its European allies. Given Mr. Bush’s single-digit popularity ratings in Europe, Mr. Putin presumably concluded this is a propitious time to push the envelope with strident warnings about a new missile race, this time one the U.S. started.
    
At first blush it seemed like much ado about very little. The U.S. proposal to expand its missile defense shield to cover Europe entails locating 10 missile interceptors in Poland that would be linked to a new radar base in the Czech Republic. For Eastern European countries that are now NATO members, the U.S. missile plan seemed like additional guarantees against their former imperial masters in Moscow. Mr. Putin’s new Russia is now flush with the income of oil and gas exports and many Eastern Europeans sense nostalgia in Moscow for what is known as its “near abroad.”
    
Poland, a country that has spent more than two centuries under imperial Russian and imperial Soviet domination, is divided on the plan for a new U.S. missile base against Iran. Surveys show 58 percent of Poles and 68 percent of Czechs opposed. But the Polish government is pushing back on what they detect to be recrudescent Russian imperial ambitions.
    
Russian generals have spoken to Polish generals as if their NATO membership was more fiction than reality. So before they accept a U.S. missile base, Polish authorities want to make sure the U.S. supplies local air defense and anti-missile systems. Unless Polish security is enhanced vis-a-vis Russia, the government sees no point in enhancing security against Iran in the distant future and antagonizing Russia in the immediate future. 
  
Asked by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera whether the U.S. defense shield in Eastern Europe would compel Moscow to target its own missiles at NATO locations and U.S. military sites in Europe, as during the Cold War, Mr. Putin said, “Naturally, yes.” His response was clearly designed to frighten our European allies to push back on the projected anti-missile deployment.
    
“If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory,” Mr. Putin told the Italian reporter, “we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe. It is up to the military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles. But this is just a technical aspect.”
    
Mr. Putin’s answer was clearly designed to sow confusion in the minds of Europeans already panicked at the idea of U.S. military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. They can see the threat of a rekindled cold war and Mr. Putin is making sure the Bush administration gets the blame. Mr. Putin and his former KGB colleagues, now relocated in key government posts, are saying, in effect, “We’re back and we’re tired of being pushed around.” Chutzpah and megalomania are part of the new image as Mr. Putin declared he is now the world’s only “pure Democrat” and complained, “After the death of Mahatma Gandhi, there’s nobody to talk to.”
    
The administration, Mr. Putin said, explains “it is necessary to defend oneself against Iranian missiles. But Iran does not have missiles with a range of 5,000-8,000 kilometers, so it’s a defense against something that does not exist. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”
    
At this geostrategic moment, Russia has more geoeconomic leverage on Europe as a whole than does a much-diminished U.S. presidency. And at the G-8 summit in Germany last week, Mr. Putin raised a proposal clearly designed to split alliance ranks: Let’s build a joint system in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan (which borders Iran). “Interesting,” Mr. Bush responded and agreed experts from both sides should meet to explore cooperation on missile defense. The Europeans saw this as a brake on Washington’s plan to deploy in former Soviet satellite countries.
    
Mr. Bush’s eight-day European tour was choreographed to soften the with-us-or-against-us war on terror image and display the softer side of power — or “smart power” in the now fashionable geopolitical vernacular.
    
Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush will meet again July 1-2, this time in the more relaxed ocean setting of the Bush family’s Kennebunkport summer compound in Maine. This will provide an opportunity to take a fresh look into each other’s hearts and/or souls and, hopefully, stow brinkmanship. 
        
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

Putin Won’t Relent: Wants to Replace WTO

By ALEX NICHOLSON, AP 

ST.PETERSBURG, Russia – Russian President Vladimir Putin called Sunday for creating an alternative to the World Trade Organization that would favor developing economies and suggested giving a greater role to regional currencies.

Speaking at an economic forum in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg, Putin lamented that today’s international economic organizations “look archaic, undemocratic and awkward” by protecting the interests mainly of developed economies.

“Today protectionism which the WTO is intended to fight oftentimes comes from developed economies that set up this structure,” Putin told the conference.

“In order to stimulate trade and investment it is worth thinking about creating a regional Eurasian institute on free trade that could take advantage of the positive experience of WTO,” he said. He did not elaborate.

Putin said the stalled Doha round of global trade talks were a sign of the problems with the organization: “Old methods of decision-making at times don’t work.”

The talks have stumbled repeatedly since their inception six years ago in Qatar’s capital, largely because of wrangling between rich and poor countries over eliminating barriers to farm trade.

Putin also said that, currently, global financial markets evolved around “one or two” currencies — an apparent reference to the euro and the dollar — and their fluctuations often have highly negative effects on many countries’ economies and financial reserves.

“There can be only one answer to this challenge — the creation of several world currencies, several financial centers,” he said. Putin suggested Russia could become one of them.

Russia remains the only major economy outside the WTO, the Geneva-based 150-member group, which sets global trade rules.

To join, Russia still needs to reach agreement with its tiny ex-Soviet neighbor Georgia, which protests Russia’s strong ties with its two breakaway provinces.

Russia also is in ongoing WTO talks with the European Union. Although the EU formally backs Russia’s World Trade Organization membership, issues including foreign investors’ access to Russia’s vast energy sector has complicated Moscow’s WTO application.

Russian officials are using the two-day forum to court international capital and talk up the resurgent country, combining ambitious economic projections with promises of an open investment climate.

Rapprochement with Russia?

By David R. Sands
The Washington Times
June 10, 2007

For once, it is crystal clear where U.S.-Russian relations are headed in one of the most testy and testing times in their bilateral ties since the end of the Cold War: Kennebunkport, Maine.
    
Russian President Vladimir Putin will be the first foreign leader ever hosted by President Bush at his family’s compound on the New England coast when the two meet for two days of private talks beginning July 1.
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet at the Bush family compound on the Maine coast July 1 for private talks.  (AP) 
    
But whether the unprecedented get-together will succeed in lowering the temperature and solving a string of problems between Moscow and Washington is another matter.
    
U.S. officials have been taken aback by the intensity of Mr. Putin’s rhetoric in recent months and his combative stand on issues ranging from energy policy and plans for a U.S. missile-defense system in Eastern Europe to the entire thrust of American policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
    
Mr. Bush, who issued the Kennebunkport invitation last month in a bid to calm the waters, acknowledged at the just-concluded Group of Eight summit of leading industrial powers that divisions between Russia and the United States have a way of producing unease for the international community as a whole.
    
“There’s a lot of people who don’t like it when Russia and the United States argue, and it creates tension,” Mr. Bush told reporters last week after a meeting with Mr. Putin on the sidelines of the summit in the German resort town of Heiligendamm.
    
“It’s much better to work together than it is to create tensions,” Mr. Bush said.
    
But analysts said creating tensions now appears to be Mr. Putin’s primary agenda item, dating back to a stinging speech he gave in February to a major defense conference held annually in Munich.
    
With U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and top European defense officials in the audience, Mr. Putin ripped into what he said were Washington’s ambitions to create a “unipolar world” with “one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master.”
    
“One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way,” Mr. Putin said. “… Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”
    
A follow-up speech by the Russian leader during Moscow’s May celebrations of victory in World War II forced Russian diplomats to deny that Mr. Putin had implicitly likened U.S. foreign policy with that of Nazi Germany.
    
The Bush administration, with hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and looming crises in Iran and North Korea, has been anxious not to pick a new fight with Moscow, despite deepening concerns about the Kremlin’s commitment to human rights, open markets and political liberties.

National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley last week noted that Moscow and Washington cooperate on a broad range of issues, including curbing nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism.
    
Mr. Gates in Munich tried to deflect Mr. Putin’s attack, joking that “one Cold War was enough.”
    
Mr. Bush dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Moscow in May in an effort at least to tone down the war of words.
    
Missile shield
    
American officials have dismissed Russian fears that the missile-defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic could ever block Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal.
    
They say the shield is designed against rogue regimes such as Iran or terrorist groups that could potentially obtain a small cache of nuclear weapons.
    
But Mr. Putin also caught Mr. Bush and American officials off-guard with a proposal in Germany last week to use an old Soviet radar station in Azerbaijan for the planned missile-defense system rather than Poland and the Czech Republic.
    
The Russian president had previously threatened to retarget Russian missiles aimed at Europe in an effort to “defeat” the U.S. shield.
    
The Azerbaijan plan “will make it unnecessary for us to place our offensive complexes along the border with Europe,” Mr. Putin said.
    
Yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Moscow that the Russian-rented Qabala radar station in Azerbaijan “remarkably well copes with all its tasks and it fully serves our interests without causing any strain in Russia’s ties with its neighbors.”
    
U.S. officials have met the idea with guarded skepticism. On a visit Friday to Warsaw, Mr. Bush signaled that he was still intent on the Polish and Czech sites.
    
On the rise
    
Russian officials and private analysts say that two major factors are behind Mr. Putin’s increasingly pugnacious tone: rising self-confidence in the Kremlin as the oil-fueled economy booms after the near-depression performance in the 1990s and growing Russian resentment at what Moscow sees as the U.S. readiness to exploit its previous weaknesses.
    
Mr. Putin, slated to step down when his second four-year term ends in March, also must watch his domestic front, protecting his legacy and ensuring the election of a sympathetic successor.
    
Tough words aimed at Washington and leading European capitals could be a way to boost hawkish Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov, long one of Mr. Putin’s closest advisers, according to Stephen Sestanovich, former top State Department adviser on Russia and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
    
“It may be that Putin is doing [Ivanov] a favor,” Mr. Sestanovich said. “Or it may be that in the last year of his presidency, he just gets to cut loose and say what he really thinks.”
    
Widening the divide is the popular impression among Russian officials that Moscow is the victim, not the aggressor, in the current period of tension.
    
In their view, U.S. and European complaints about the state of democracy under Mr. Putin are an unacceptable interference in Russia’s internal affairs. NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and the proposed missile-defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic are moves designed to exploit Russia’s post-Cold War weakness.
    
“No country in the world would permit interference from abroad in its internal political life,” Dmitry Peskov, Mr. Putin’s press spokesman, said in a teleconference with Western reporters last month.
    
“We were told that NATO had no interest in expanding to our borders after the end of the Soviet Union, and now we see that is not the case,” he added.
    
Unwelcome criticism
    
Russian officials recall an address by Vice President Dick Cheney in Lithuania on the eve of the 2006 G-8 summit, which contained sharp criticisms of Russian policy.
    
Mr. Cheney accused Moscow of using its vast oil and gas reserves as “tools of intimidation and blackmail,” and slammed Russian interference in the states along its border.
    
“No one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor or interfere with democratic movements,” Mr. Cheney said.
    
U.S. and European analysts saw the addition of Poland, the Czech Republic and other Eastern and Central European nations to NATO as a milestone marking the end of divisions on the continent. The same process was read very differently in Moscow.
    
“Russia has long resented NATO enlargement far more than is appreciated by policy-makers in Washington,” said William C. Potter, director of the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies in Monterey, Calif.
    
“The recent flurry of activity surrounding U.S. efforts to build new anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe was the last straw for Putin and his advisers,” Mr. Potter said in a recent interview with the International Affairs Forum.
    
Rising Kremlin self-confidence is fueled by Moscow’s belief that U.S. problems in Iraq and Mr. Bush’s personal unpopularity across much of Europe present an opportunity for Russia, according to Pavel K. Baev, an analyst on Russian politics for the Washington-based Eurasia Daily Monitor and a senior researcher at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
    
“The looming disaster [in Iraq] is perceived in Moscow as a drain on U.S. leadership, and the erosion of Western unity is seen as an expansion of Russia’s space for maneuvering,” Mr. Baev said.
    
Trouble on the border
    
The Kremlin has also strongly objected to what it sees as U.S. and Western “meddling” in former Soviet states and allies along its borders, Russia’s famous “near abroad.”
    
Washington and Moscow have waged a fierce diplomatic battle for allies and oil pipelines in Central Asia. The 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which involved openly pro-Russian and pro-Western factions battling for power, crystallized for many Russians the battle for influence in its strategic back yard.
    
Russian assertiveness has not been limited to the United States. A mid-May summit of Russia and the European Union was widely seen as a disaster, with Mr. Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the current EU president, unable to agree on even a bland communique at the end.
    
At last week’s G-8 summit, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he told Mr. Putin in his bilateral meeting that the West was “becoming worried and fearful about what was happening in Russia today.”
    
“There are real issues. I don’t think they are going to be resolved any time soon,” Mr. Blair said.
    
Mr. Putin bluntly rejected a compromise floated by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy to grant the Serbian province of Kosovo independence from Belgrade after an unspecified period of delay.
    
France, the United States and most Western powers strongly back a United Nations blueprint allowing the ethnic-Albanian province to break with Serbia. But Russia has backed Serbia, its traditional ally, in rejecting the plan and has hinted it is ready to use its U.N. Security Council veto to block the idea.
    
Mr. Putin last week in Germany did not sound like a man who was afraid to be isolated on the Kosovo issue.
    
“People are trying to convince us this problem can be resolved without getting agreement from Serbia,” he told reporters in Heiligendamm. “We believe this is wrong and does not correspond to moral and legal norms.”
    
The Council on Foreign Relations’ Mr. Sestanovich said Mr. Bush issued the Kennebunkport invitation to Mr. Putin in part to head off any confrontation at the G-8 gathering.
    
Mr. Putin this weekend faces another tough audience as he addresses a major exposition of Russian and foreign business leaders at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that concludes today.
    
He is slated to meet privately with some 100 foreign business executives, including chief executive officers from such companies as PepsiCo, Royal Dutch Shell and electronics giant Siemens AG. Recent moves by the Kremlin to crack down on dissent and regain control of key oil and gas exploration deals has unnerved foreign investors, and that could be a brake on the government.
    
U.S. officials are not raising expectations that the Kennebunkport summit will lead to breakthroughs on the issues dividing the two governments. Aides say Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin have been able to retain a personal rapport, despite the official difficulties.
    
Mr. Hadley acknowledges the relationship these days is “complicated,” but said Mr. Bush will not back down.
    
“The president has been very clear that while it is clear that Russia’s future is in its hands, we believe, obviously for Russia and any other nation, that true stability and prosperity comes when nations give their people economic freedom and build institutions of enduring democracy,” he said.
    
“The president has talked with many nations about that, and that’s obviously part of our dialogue with Russia,” Mr. Hadley said.

Related:
White House ‘encouraged’ by Russia on missile defense

Bob Gates at Pentagon: No Longing for Rumsfeld

‘Russia is not an enemy’

By Joseph Curl
The Washington Times
June 7, 2007

ROSTOCK, Germany — President Bush yesterday sought to tone down the fiery rhetoric in his weeklong dispute with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a proposed U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe, saying, “Russia is not an enemy.”
    
Arriving in Germany for the annual Group of Eight summit — and with a private meeting with Mr. Putin planned for today — the president pulled back from a game of brinksmanship that had prompted Moscow to threaten to aim missiles at Europe.
    
“Russia is not going to attack Europe,” Mr. Bush told reporters at the Baltic Sea resort town of Heiligendamm, where the leaders are meeting. “There needs to be no military response because we’re not at war with Russia. … Russia is not a threat. Nor is the missile defense we’re proposing a threat to Russia.”
    
Mr. Putin has ratcheted up rhetoric for a week, saying the U.S. plan to install 10 missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic is tantamount to returning to the Cold War. He threatened to aim his own multiwarhead missiles — capable of penetrating the shield — if the United States does not abandon its plan.
    
Mr. Bush said Russia’s missile capability is vastly superior to the shield, and he offered to open up its installation to officials from Russia.
    
“A missile-defense system that is deployed in Europe can handle one or two rocket launchers. It can’t handle a multiple launch regime. Russia has got an inventory that could overpower any missile-defense system,” he said.
    
In addition, he said if the Russian leader thinks that the missile-defense system is a threat to his nation, the United States would ease his fears.
    
“There’s all kinds of ways you can do that. One is total transparency between our militaries and scientists — military people and scientists, which I’m more than happy to do.”
    
As he has said many times before, Mr. Bush said the real object of the shield is “aimed at a country like Iran, if they ended up with a nuclear weapon, so that they couldn’t blackmail the free world.”
    
And he said the United States simply cannot wait for Iran to construct a nuclear weapon, which the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said last month could come in as little as three years.
    
“I would argue that it’s best to anticipate what might happen and work to see that it doesn’t happen, as opposed to not be prepared if it does happen. I mean, if somebody pops up with a weapon and says, hands up, people will say, ‘Well, how come we didn’t have a shield?’

And so it’s — I think we need to do both. I think we need to protect ourselves of what might happen, and then work collaboratively to make sure it doesn’t happen,” the president said.
    
But Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said yesterday that Mr. Bush has failed to make a persuasive case for deployment of missiles in Eastern Europe, which he said would upset the balance of power on the Continent. He dismissed the president’s contention that the United States cannot wait and Mr. Bush’s assertion that he is simply protecting U.S. allies in Europe from an Iranian missile.

Mr. Peskov sought to pull back Mr. Putin’s threat to target missiles at Europe, saying the statement was hypothetical and was just one of the options that Russia is considering.
    
“It was not some kind of threatening statement on the part of Mr. Putin. He was just asked by a journalist if he would be ready, hypothetically to consider re-targeting … and he confirmed that that would be one of the ways Russia could respond,” he said.
    
Still, the souring relationship of the two leaders — which began when Mr. Bush said he had looked into the soul of the former KGB man and seen a man he could deal with — has drawn all eyes toward their bilateral meeting today.

The once-hot issue of climate change has faded into the background, and other leaders at the summit — including Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair — have waded into the fray.
    
The summit brings together leaders from eight leading industrialized countries — U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia — as well as officials from China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.
    
On another major world issue, Mr. Bush stood firm during a bilateral meeting with the summit’s host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on the U.S. refusal to have the meeting endorse her plan to limit the global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
    
Mr. Bush reiterated his opposition, stated earlier this week, forcing the German chancellor to back down and pursue more modest goals on greenhouse gases that all eight nations could support. The U.S. leader offered instead to discuss a post-Kyoto pact in the context of an upcoming U.N. conference in Indonesia.
    
Jim Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, said all the biggest-emitting nations had to be involved in any deal, although such developing countries as China and India have said they will not cut their own carbon-dioxide emissions.
    
Meanwhile in Moscow yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said his nation will not quit a key arms-control pact next week at a conference in Vienna, Austria. 
    

Putin goes ballistic

USAToday
Commentary

“The Cold War is over,” President Bush said Tuesday in the Czech Republic. To leaders of the major industrialized countries gathering this week in Germany amid a flurry of U.S.-Russian name-calling, it might instead feel as if the Cold War is back.

U.S. President George W. Bush delivers a speech at a democracy and security conference at Czermin Palace in Prague, June 5, 2007. Bush on Tuesday criticized Russia and China on democracy, saying the United States would continue building relationships with those countries but without abandoning its values. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
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The U.S.-Russian chill is focused most immediately on an issue with a distinct Cold War echo: missile defense. Washington wants to station 10 interceptors in Poland, with an associated radar in the Czech Republic, Russia’s backyard.

The missile shield itself is expensive, unproven and almost beside the point. At best, building it would provide an extra layer of security, if only as a psychological deterrent to rogue regimes. It is no threat to Russia, which could easily overwhelm any defense with its vast arsenal.

Even so, Russian President Vladimir Putin says he doesn’t buy assurances that the shield is intended only to protect NATO allies and U.S. forces in Europe against the threat of a missile or two from Iran. Instead, in a series of belligerent moves, Russia has tested a long-range multiple-warhead missile, the RS-24, which it says is designed to overcome missile defenses. If Poland and the Czech Republic go ahead, Putin declared, “We will have to have new targets in Europe.”The escalating spat is about far more than the missile shield. It is part of Putin’s authoritarian efforts to reassert Russian power, particularly because Russian oil has left the country richer and no longer in debt to Western lenders.Putin is smarting from Russia’s loss of superpower status. Poland and the Czech Republic were once under Soviet control. Now, they’re NATO members. Non-violent democratic revolutions with an anti-Russian tinge, most recently in the Ukraine and Georgia, each of which borders Russia, are further encroaching. So some Soviet-style bluster serves his interests and perhaps salves his ego, as well as his nation’s.

His arguments against the missile shield are disingenuous. Accused by Bush and others of rolling back democracy in Russia, for example, Putin retorted that he is the world’s only “absolute and pure democrat.” He recently compared the United States to Hitler’s Germany.

The best response to Putin’s petulance is to firmly but calmly work to reassure him and bring him on board on a range of mutual challenges, including Iran’s nuclear program. One possibility is to take up an old Putin proposal to work on new arms treaties.

The Cold War is indeed over. To ensure it stays that way, Putin’s psyche needs thoughtful attention – starting with the summit in Germany and continuing when Putin visits Bush in Maine next month.

Bush says Russia won’t attack Europe

By Terance Hunt, AP

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany - President Bush on Wednesday discounted Vladimir Putin‘s threat to re-target missiles on Europe, saying “Russia is not going to attack Europe.”

Bush, in an interview with the Associated Press and other reporters, said that no U.S. military response was required after Putin warned that Russia would take steps in response to a U.S. missile shield that would be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Russia is not an enemy,” Bush said, sitting in a sun-drenched garden. “There needs to be no military response because we’re not at war with Russia. Russia is not a threat.”

Bush and Putin will meet Wednesday at the opening of the summit of industrialized nations. Asked if he anticipated a tense encounter, Bush replied “Could be. I don’t think so … I’ll work to see that it’s not a tense meeting.”

Bush talked with reporters for nearly an hour, touching on subjects from global warming to Iran, the suffering in Darfur to the war in Iraq.

The president said he would like to see other countries follow the United States in taking steps against the government of Sudan to stop the misery in Darfur.“I’m frustrated because there are still people suffering and the U.N. process is moving at a snail’s pace,” Bush said.

Bush seeks a U.N. resolution to apply new international sanctions against the Sudanese government. It would seek to impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to Sudan, prohibit Sudan’s government from conducting offensive military flights over Darfur and strengthen the U.S. ability to monitor and report any violations.On climate, Bush said he would not give ground on global warming proposals that would require mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, he backed his own proposal that the United States and other nations that spew the most greenhouse gases meet and — by the end of next year — set a long-term strategy for reducing emissions.

Bush’s plan addresses “life after” 2012, the expiration date for the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States didn’t sign.

Bush wants to bring India, China and other fast-growing countries to the negotiation table. He envisions that each country will set goals on how they want to improve energy security, reduce air pollution and cut greenhouse gases in the next 10 to 20 years.

“The United States can serve as a bridge to help find a solution,” Bush said.

He said that the summit, running Wednesday through Friday, would produce a consensus for a post-Kyoto framework after the landmark treaty expires in 2012.

Putin rattled nerves in Europe with his weekend declaration that he would retarget missiles on Europe in response to the missile defense shield. “I don’t think Vladimir Putin intends to attack Europe,” Bush said.

Bush cited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declaration that it was “too late” to stop Iran’s nuclear program as justification for the U.S. missile defense system. “Therefore, let’s build a missile defense system,” Bush said, adding that it was time to return to the U.N. Security Council to tighten pressure on Iran to give up its suspected weapons program.

Bush insisted anew that Russia has no reason to worry about a missile shield. He said Moscow has an arsenal of nuclear rockets “that could overwhelm any defense system.” Instead, Bush argued that an antimissile system would be intended to protect against rogue states like Iran and North Korea. The president has angered Putin in the past by criticizing Russia’s spotty progress on democratic reform and human rights — a theme Bush expressed in a speech just one day ago. Still, Bush said that Russia has “advanced a long way from the old Soviet era.” Asked if Putin was trying to play to public opinion at home with his tough talk, Bush said he could not be sure, but added: “When public opinion influences leadership, it indicates there is an involvement of the people.”Bush said that despite all the problems, the United States has a friendship with Russia. He said the fundamental question is whether it makes sense to have good relations with Russia. “It does,” Bush said.“There will be disagreements,” Bush added. “That’s the way life works.”

Missiles Everywhere

By James T. Hackett
The Washington Times
June 6, 2007

All of a sudden, we face more new missiles since the end of the Cold War. China and Russia are about to deploy new missiles and nuclear warheads specifically designed to strike this country, while India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran are increasing the range of their missiles. In contrast, we are building missile defenses.
    
A Pentagon report issued last month on China’s military buildup describes a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles. It was followed by a successful Russian flight test of a new multiple-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). China’s missile buildup has been under way for years. Beijing has steadily increased its short-range missiles opposite Taiwan until they total about 1,000, some 900 ballistic missiles and 100 cruise missiles.
    
At the same time, the Pentagon report says, “China is qualitatively and quantitatively improving its strategic forces.” For years, China has had some 20 CSS-4 ICBMs with enough range to reach the United States, and about 90 medium- and intermediate-range missiles that can target U.S. bases and allies in the Pacific.
    
But now new long-range missiles are coming on line. The pride of China’s strategic forces are the three-stage, solid-fuel, road-mobile DF-31, which can reach Alaska and Hawaii, and the DF-31A ICBM, which targets the U.S. mainland. The DF-31 is operational and the ICBM version could be this year or next.
    
The only purpose of the DF-31A is to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. The most likely scenario has Beijing threatening to use it to hold the U.S. at bay while applying military force against Taiwan. Another weapon apparently designed for the same purpose is China’s new Type 094 Jin-class ballistic missile submarine. With Russian help, China has achieved major progress in submarine technology.
    
The first Jin-class submarine was launched in 2004 and five more are coming. Each will carry 16 JL-2 ballistic missiles (sea-launch versions of the DF-31). With a range of 5,000 miles, they can be launched against the United States from the safety of China’s coastal waters. The JL-2 is believed to carry a single 400-kiloton nuclear warhead.
    
When the Jin-class submarines are operational, China will have the third-most-powerful sea-based nuclear missile force in the world. Considering China sold a nuclear warhead design to A.Q. Khan of Pakistan, head of an international nuclear black market, there is legitimate concern that Beijing’s new missile technologies might also leak to other countries, or even to terrorists.
    
Russia’s new weapons are even more advanced. On May 29, Russia conducted successful flight tests of both a new ICBM and a short-range cruise missile. The RS-24 ICBM appears to be a larger version of the single-warhead Topol-M ballistic missile Moscow now is producing. There are 42 Topol-Ms in silos and three mobile ones operational, with 70 more planned. They carry a single nuclear warhead, but Moscow intends to convert them to three warheads each. A high-speed, maneuvering warhead designed for the three-warhead version has been flight-tested twice with great fanfare.
    
The RS-24 ICBM probably combines stages of the Topol-M and Russia’s new Bulava 30 submarine-launch missile, which has much greater throw-weight and can carry six nuclear warheads. All three ICBMs were developed by the same organization, the Moscow Thermotechnical Institute.
    
The Bulava 30 has failed in several flight tests, but its development continues and Moscow plans to deploy it in five new Borei-class missile submarines, and use it to replace the aging missiles in Russia’s existing undersea fleet. These new missiles and warheads have been designed to evade U.S. missile defenses.
    
Russia’s new cruise missile, the Iskander-M, is a longer-range version of the Iskander-E, which was designed for export. The E model carries a high explosive warhead to a range of 280 kilometers, within the 300-kilometer export limit of the Missile Technology Control Regime. But the M model, designed for Russia’s own army, can deliver a nuclear warhead at least 490 kilometers to countries near Russia. It is a blunt warning to Poland and the Czech Republic not to accept U.S. bases, and to Georgia and the Ukraine not to join NATO.
    
President Vladimir Putin’s heavy-handed attacks on the U.S. and his talk of Europe becoming a “powder keg” is underlined by Moscow’s new nuclear missiles. Development of such weapons in both Russia and China, and their potential spread elsewhere, shows the urgent need to deploy missile defenses, including in Europe. It is better to build defenses that harm no one than to return to the nuclear arms race.
    
    James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to The Washington Times based in Carlsbad, Calif.