Transitions Online www.tol.cz Russia: From Bush with Love George Bush says he "loves" Putin, while Putin says Russia has never known freedom of speech "so I don't understand what one can violate." By Sergei Borisov
ULYANOVSK, Russia--Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed his five-day visit to the United States as "a spectacular stride toward real, mutually respectful partnership."
If that seemed an effusive assessment of the latest Russia-U.S. summit, it paled against the view of U.S. President George Bush. Conveying the nature of his partnership with Putin better than any communique could, Bush told journalists that: "I love him, believe it or not." He called Putin his good friend and a "guy" with whom one could have a good time.
"Thanks for your kind words, George," Putin replied heartily.
It is a personal friendship that has determined relations between Putin and Bush since first eye contact, when Bush famously said he had looked into Putin's eyes and seen his soul.
For Putin, the relationship is now so strong that he was prepared to reveal a "secret" never mentioned before in public--that Russia turned down calls to "come out against the United States" in Afghanistan.
"People who confronted U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and were determined to carry on the confrontation" were showering Moscow with such calls as the Afghan anti-terror operation was beginning, Putin told journalists.
"We don't know what turn Afghan developments might have taken were it not for President Bush's contacts with me," he said, conspicuously underlining the gratitude that Washington should feel toward him.
The fundamental reason why Russia had lent a hand to the United States in the Afghan operation was to help Afghanistan, Putin indicated.
CONSTRUCTIVE BALANCING
In Camp David, both Putin and Bush tried to find out other spheres in which they could use the political capital they have built up with each other.
"The Russians are taking a very constructive position," Condoleeza Rice, Bush's national security advisor, told Fox TV on 27 September. She indicated that Russia "will seek a possibility" to assist the United States in Iraq, Rice said.
Putin struck a similarly optimistic note. "We saw the ways to settle the problem differently," he said of Saddam Hussein, "but … our two countries' fundamental interests matter much more than differences around U.S. military action in Iraq."
Some differences remain, with Putin continuing to stress that the United Nations should play a central role in postwar Iraq, rather than the support role that the United States now sees for the organization. But these differences no longer appear to be obstacles.
In a speech at the United Nations on 25 September, Putin said Russia's position on Iraq was "consistent and clear: only the direct involvement of the UN in the restoration of Iraq will give its people the chance to control their future themselves."
Putin spoke highly of the role the United Nations could play now and in the future.
Time has merely confirmed "the universal significance" of the structure and role of the United Nations, he asserted. "And the tools of the UN are not just in demand today," he continued. "They, as life has shown, are simply irreplaceable in key situations."
It was a speech described as "colorless and empty" by some in the Russian media, but lauded by others as an excellent balancing act. Andrei Kokoshin, a Duma Deputy from the centrist Fatherland-Unified Russia, told TV Tsentr that Putin had "successfully balanced Russia's interests vis-a-vis the United States, the European Union, the Arab world, and China."
How successful Russia's balance act is could become clearer this week when the United States presents a draft resolution to the UN Security Council, calling for an enlarged UN role in Iraq's postwar reconstruction. Moscow will probably support it, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on 25 September.
The differences between Russia and the United States over Iraq "have been left in the past," Ivanov said.
Putin promised Russia will decide how to contribute to Iraq's recovery "as soon as the basic premises of a tentative UN Security Council resolution become clear." Russia wants questions over postwar Iraq to be settled as soon as possible, he stressed.
While the difference in attitude toward Iraq are blurring or disappearing, differences over Iran remain clear. Putin did not indicate any intention of scaling down or ending Russia's transfer of technology and expertise to help Iran build a nuclear power plant in Bushehr. Iran insists the plant is a part of a legitimate civilian nuclear-energy program.
Putin, however, joined in the international chorus of concern regarding Iran's nuclear plans, saying "now is the time for an explicit, but respectful, call to Iran to carry on and step up its cooperation with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]." Compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was necessary and also in Russia's national interests, he suggested.
ALLIES OR NOT?
There is one sphere in which Putin seems particularly anxious to indicate that there are no differences between Moscow and Washington: the war on terror. In this, Moscow and Washington are not partners: they are "allies on the anti-terror crusade."
If any residual Cold War warriors remained unconvinced, Putin underlined that, for him, the Cold War was buried when he talked to business leaders at the New York Stock Exchange. Americans are accepting that the "Russians have arrived," he said. "They don't have horns, and they walk on two legs, just like other people," he added.
But Putin sought to slay one relic of the Cold War: continued restrictions on Russian trade with the United States introduced in 1974 when Soviet Jews were fighting for the right to emigrate. The restrictions, known as the Jackson-Vanick amendment, remain a bone of contention and the Bush administration has not just withdrawn it.
"We are amazed it could still be preserved and used," Putin said. "It inflicts moral damage to our cooperation."
TWO PUTINS
While Russian analysts are only now writing up their comments on the results of Putin's visit to the United States, human-rights advocates were active in advance of his trip, taking out full-page advertisements in U.S. newspapers with seven "questions" that Bush should ask "his friend Putin."
The questions, posed by (among others) Elena Bonner, widow of Nobel prize-winner Andrei Sakharov, and Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet political prisoner, assailed Russian authorities for "systematically" undermining democratic institutions, committing "war crimes and genocide," exploiting "anti-Semitism and xenophobia," and handing "more than 50 percent of the most important government posts" to former members of the secret services.
Roughly $500,000 of the cost of the advertisements was stumped up by the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a former Kremlin insider now considered to be one of Putin's fiercest critics and recently granted political asylum in Britain.
On the eve of the Camp David summit, the Civic Rights Foundation, created by Berezovsky, sent U.S. senators and congressmen DVDs with films covering the war in Chechnya and the hostage crisis in October 2002, in which 129 died as Russian troops stormed the Nord-Ost theater after it had been seized by Chechens. The films also raised old questions about who was behind the bombing of block apartments in 1999. The bombings, which officials blamed on Chechens, left 223 dead and led to the renewal of war in Chechnya. Berezovsky has long maintained that the Russian secret services were responsible. The Russian authorities largely thwarted Berezovsky's efforts to distribute a film about the bombings within Russia.
The foundation said that the films exposed the "antidemocratic essence of Putin's regime." Alexander Goldfarb, chief executive of the foundation, was quoted by Lenta.ru as saying that the campaign was intended to persuade U.S. lawmakers to convince the Bush administration to "stop [its] thoughtless encouragement of Putin's regime."
Concerns about Putin's record were also voiced in Moscow when, on 26 September, six civic-rights organizations issued a joint statement to warn about a "serious deterioration" in the human-rights situation in Russia.
The head of the For Human Rights organization Lev Ponomarev told the BBC's Russian service that the statement was "an impromptu answer" to Putin's speeches in the United States. He and other human-rights activists believe there are two Putins, one is "exportable" to the West and the other for Russians.
In the United States, Putin said the special services "should not poke their nose into civil society," but they must guarantee interests of the state.
Asked at Columbia University about violations of press freedoms, Putin said "we have never had freedom of speech in Russia, so I don't understand what one can violate."
"There is opinion [in Russia]," he continued "that freedom, including freedom of speech, is permissiveness, anarchy, the aspiration for destruction at any price, at all cost. I think that freedom is also a possibility to express an opinion, but there must be certain limitations."
According to Ponomarev, "that means all that we consider to be achievement, the beginning of the democratic process, the president considers to be the beginning of permissiveness."
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