MOSCOW: Russia wants to steer relations with the United States back onto solid footing after months of drift and will tell US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week that it remains a reliable partner in areas of strategic importance for both countries, experts say.
While the two countries have found themselves either in direct opposition or taking approaches of nuanced difference on issues ranging from controversial elections in Ukraine and Iraq to Iran’s nuclear programme , Russia will stress that these divergences are outweighed by common interests.
Chief among them is prosecution of the so-called international war on terrorism — a cause denounced by liberal critics in both countries as a licence to jettison basic civil liberties — and its attendant fight against spread of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President George Bush in Bratislava in February, “the US was in a very critical mood and wanted to give Russia a spanking,” according to Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director for the Moscow-based Institute for USA and Canada Studies.
That meeting followed muscular diplomatic exchanges between the two countries over revolts in ex-Soviet republics that replaced Moscow-backed regimes with pro-Western leaders and came amid pointed US questioning of political reforms pushed by Putin that critics regard as anti-democratic.
But the Bratislava “spanking” was averted and “Condoleezza Rice will now judge whether it was right or not to put off this spanking” and whether Russia is indeed, as Putin has promised, staying true to democratic principles - even if adapting them to suit Russian realities, Kremenyuk said.
He and many other political insiders here cited fragmentary and unconfirmed information that in exchange for US assent to limit criticism of Putin’s domestic political agenda, the Russia leader granted US inspectors unprecedented secret access to some of Russia’s nuclear weapons facilities.
“More than anything else, Bush fears that terrorists could get hold of nuclear weapons from Russian sources because of weak security controls,” Kremenyuk said. “The Americans are prepared to pay to make sure these weapons are safeguarded, but want to verify this security for themselves.”
Close Russian cooperation on keeping weapons of mass destruction under tight lock and key may be Washington’s single most important policy priority with Moscow, and Rice was expected to reiterate that message during her visit on Tuesday and Wednesday, experts said.—AFP
