MOSCOW, April 30 (AFP) - Russian media Wednesday reported in detail the snub President Vladimir Putin administered to British Prime Minister Tony Blair over Iraq but refrained from describing it, as their counterparts in London did, as a "humiliation."
Blair, whose bid to enlist Putin's support for lifting UN sanctions on Iraq was roundly rejected at the meeting outside Moscow Tuesday, could reasonably have "taken offence" or even "become seriously angry" at Putin's approach, the business daily Kommersant observed.
The Russian leader "did not pull his punches," Kommersant commented, highlighting -- as all the Moscow media did -- Putin's jibe to Blair over the US-led coalition's failure to locate Saddam Hussein's alleged armoury of weapons of mass destruction, in which he asked with mocking irony, "Where are Saddam's arsenals? Perhaps he's hiding in a bunker sitting on a crate of them."
Blair, "a de facto winner in the war," responded like "a man who is certain of his strength and can allow himself a lot, including indulgence towards the losers," the paper said.
"What got under Putin's skin?" Kommersant wondered. "Perhaps it was simply that Blair did not offer anything sufficiently interesting for Putin to say anything else," it concluded.
The daily Gazeta stressed that Blair, who on April 11 had turned down an invitation to join a "peace camp" summit with Russia, France and Germany in Putin's home city of Saint Petersburg, had come to Moscow to "make peace" in the interest of Russo-British relations and also of Russo-American relations.
It noted too that Putin will be visiting London in late June, so that Blair's trip to Moscow was "a further opportunity to show that relations between London and Moscow are improving."
The daily Vremya Novostei picked up Putin's comment that despite their "different approaches" there was "an understanding" on the need to work together to resolve many issues, but noted that at their joint press conference the differences between Putin and Blair were "a great deal more evident" than the understanding.
Overall, however, the tone of the Russian dailies constrasted strongly with that heard in London where print media headlines highlighted a "double rebuff" for Blair (the Independent), observed on his return "From Russia with Scorn" (the Daily Mail) or remarked on a "new Cold War" (the Express).
Separately, Russian media saw a plan announced Tuesday by four European antiwar countries (France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg) to boost Europe's self-reliance in defence matters as a source of possible division in Europe.
The mini-summit "will inevitably deepen the schism in Europe," Kommersant wrote, while Izvestia pondered: "How can Europe be convinced of the necessity for a new arms race?"
Paris and Berlin might understand the need to spend more on defence, but "the others will be difficult to persuade," Izvestia warned.
And some papers warned that the initiative would be seen by many European Union member states as simply "anti-American."
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