Russia 090508 Basic Political Developments

Obama confident that U.S., Russia can improve ties

http://en.rian.ru/world/20090508/121498150.html

WASHINGTON, May 8 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. President Barack Obama said after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Moscow and Washington had a great chance to "reset" relations.

"We have an excellent opportunity to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia on a whole host of issues," Obama said on Thursday after talks in Washington with Russia's top diplomat.

Lavrov called the talks "productive," noting their "constructive, business-like nature." He also said that Russian-U.S. relations should be based on mutual respect.

Obama said that he had discussed a wide range of issues with Lavrov, including Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the financial crisis, and his upcoming visit to Moscow, scheduled for July.

After a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Lavrov said he hoped the work of the Russia-NATO Council would be resumed in the near future.

"We hope that in the near future the artificial obstacles in the way of the resumption of the Russia-NATO Council's work will be fully overcome and this important body will resume its work based on the principles agreed on when it was created," Lavrov told journalists.

Russia announced it was withdrawing from a planned Russia-NATO Council meeting later this month in response to the expulsion of two of its diplomats from Brussels. In response, Moscow announced the expulsion of two Canadian diplomats working in NATO's Information Office in Moscow.

Lavrov said the expulsion was an attempt to disrupt the resumption of Russia-NATO ties, suspended after Russia fought a brief war with Georgia over South Ossetia last August. However, he also said that disagreements were "natural for relations between any two large states".

Medvedev has called ongoing NATO-led military drills in Georgia an "open provocation." According to NATO, the drills are aimed at improving interoperability between NATO and partner countries, within the framework of Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative programs, and will not involve any light or heavy weaponry.

Lavrov's visit came after Georgian authorities blamed Russia for a brief military mutiny at a Georgian tank base earlier this week. However, Clinton and Lavrov said that arms reduction had taken precedence over the Georgian issue in their talks. Russia and the U.S. have begun work on a new treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, START I, which expires in December.

"If you look at what we are doing on START and non-proliferation, that has to do with the future safety of the world and the United States and Russia bear a special responsibility," Clinton said. She also said that she did not want to discuss Russia's position on NATO drills in Georgia, adding that, "We want to normalize the relationship [with Moscow] and raise it to a new level."

Lavrov added that arms reduction was too vital an issue to be made "hostage of any particular regime anywhere in the world."

The term "reset" has been used on a number of occasions by the Obama administration with relation to Russia-U.S. ties. In March, Clinton presented Lavrov with a yellow box with a large red "reset" button on it, which she asked Lavrov to push with her. On either side of the button the word "reset" was written in English and what was supposed to be a Russian translation. However, Washington's translators had made a mistake, writing the word, writing the Russian for "overload" on it instead.

Obama 'hopeful' of improving US-Russian ties

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3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama said he was "hopeful" of improving ties between Washington and Moscow as the chief US and Russian diplomats vowed to put nuclear arms control above their row in Georgia.

Obama took the unusual step of holding a full meeting with visiting Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as he works to repair US-Russian relations battered by a string of disputes late in the administration of former president George W. Bush.

Earlier, Lavrov and his US counterpart, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, declared that tension over the former Soviet state of Georgia will not torpedo negotiations to replace a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty.

Obama said his wide-ranging talks with Lavrov focused on Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Middle East, the financial crisis and other issues.

"We have an excellent opportunity to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia on a whole host of issues," the president said.

"I am hopeful that the meetings that we had so far and the meetings that we expect to have throughout the course of this year, will be of mutual benefit to both countries."

Lavrov said the two sides were working in a "pragmatic" and "businesslike" way, as they seek to conclude a follow-on to the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Obama is set to travel to Russia for talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in July, after their first meeting in London in March in which they pledged to seek a successor to START by the time it expires in December.

The latest flare up in US-Russian relations came this week, as Georgia was hit by a military mutiny hours before NATO began a month-long 1,100-troop exercise in the country. Moscow strongly opposes the maneuvers.

Tbilisi's pro-Western government has accused Russia of being behind the mutiny and a series of protests to oust Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. Both Clinton and Lavrov, who held a joint press conference after their meeting at the State Department, insisted plans for a START successor trumped their concerns over Georgia.

"If you look at what we are doing on START and non-proliferation, that has to do with the future safety of the world and the United States and Russia bear a special responsibility," she added. "So we are working very hard together."

Lavrov echoed her point.

"The task of further reductions of strategic offensive weapons is too important for both Russia and for (the) US and, for the entire world in fact, to make it hostage of any particular regime anywhere around the globe," he said.

Signed in 1991, START placed strict limits on the number of missiles and warheads that Moscow and Washington could have, leading to steep reductions in the nuclear arsenals of both sides.

On Georgia, Clinton said that she believed Lavrov and the Russians "recognize that stability and a peaceful resolution to the tensions in Georgia is in everyone's interest."

Lavrov hinted that Russia would be ready to allow monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to return to South Ossetia, a breakaway Georgian region that Moscow backed in the war in August.

"Of course, we need to find parameters that would be acceptable for all those who will be performing the missions," Clinton said.

Twenty OSCE unarmed military observers have been deployed in Georgia since September 2008 but Moscow opposed renewing their mandate which expires June 30.

The two top diplomats said they discussed how to help to revive stalled multilateral negotiations on disarming North Korea's nuclear arsenal.

They also spoke about their joint participation in multilateral talks to press Iran to stop uranium enrichment that the United States fears is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.

But they gave no sign that they could agree on US calls for tougher United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran if the Obama administration's policy to engage diplomatically with the Islamic Republic fails.

Exact day of Medvedev-Obama summit to be made public in a few days

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13916981&PageNum=0

WASHINGTON, May 7 (Itar-Tass) - An exact date of a summit conference between the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama will be announced in a few days' time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday after talks with the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

"We've held fruitful talks that focused on how we fulfill the instructions of our Presidents," which they formulated in the joint statements issued after the April 1 summit in London.

"We did a detailed assessment of practical steps on these instructions, especially in the context of preparations for the Moscow summit in July," Lavrov said.

"We agreed to announce the dates of that summit in a few days' time," he said.

He indicated that, hopefully, all the artificial barriers to the resumption of activity of the Russia-NATO Council have been eliminated.

Lavrov also said that Russia and the U.S. have agreed on new steps towards reducing the risks of nuclear armaments proliferation.

"We have quite a lot of things to do in this sphere, which is probably the most successful one in terms of our bilateral cooperation," Lavrov said.

"Today we mapped out additional steps that will help build up global security and reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation," he said.

"As two largest nuclear powers, Russia and the U.S. are ready to steer this work and to set an example for other countries, inviting them to join collective interaction," Lavrov said.

Obama, Russia looking past their differences

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By DESMOND BUTLER – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama, after meeting with a top Russian official on Thursday, said he thinks the United States and Russia can narrow their differences over nuclear weapons, the Middle East and several other issues.

Obama met at the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. They discussed a number of issues likely to come up when Obama visits Moscow in July.

"We have an excellent opportunity to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia on a whole host of issues," Obama told reporters after the meeting. Those issues, he said, include nuclear proliferation, the situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East, and the worldwide economy.

Lavrov, who met earlier with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said, "I think we work in a very pragmatic, businesslike way" to resolve differences between the two countries.

Clinton and Lavrov said earlier that recent differences over Georgia will not stand in the way of arms control negotiations.

In a cordial appearance during Lavrov's first visit to Washington during the Obama administration, the officials expressed optimism that their countries were easing disagreements that have roiled relations in recent years.

Lavrov said through an interpreter that reducing nuclear arsenals was "too important both for Russia and the United States and the rest of the world to hold hostage."

However, the meeting came as tensions flared over NATO exercises in Georgia. Ahead of his arrival in Washington, Lavrov canceled a May 19 meeting at NATO to protest the exercises.

On Wednesday, Russia announced the expulsion of two Moscow-based NATO officials in a tit-for-tat move after NATO revoked the accreditation of two Russian envoys to alliance headquarters in Brussels.

NATO did not give a reason for the April 30 revocations, but Russia suggested the move was tied to a February espionage scandal in which Moscow was accused of accepting NATO secrets from a spy.

Other disagreements that emerged under the Bush administration also remain. Washington and Moscow appear divided on how to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, for instance.

On Thursday, with Clinton, Lavrov repeated Russia's opposition to EU and U.S. sanctions against Iran, insisting that actions should be coordinated within the United Nations' Security Council.

And while the United States has put its contentious missile defense plans in Europe under review, that disagreement has not been resolved.

Lavrov said the two sides continue to discuss Russian proposals for cooperation and compromise on missile defense.

The Obama administration wants to emphasize topics the two sides might agree on: new arms control and nonproliferation talks.

"It is, I think, old thinking to say that we have a disagreement in one area, therefore we shouldn't work on something else that is of overwhelming importance," Clinton said. "That's just not how we think."

U.S. and Russian negotiators have recently begun negotiating to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which expires at year's end. Those talks were launched after the first face-to-face meeting between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month.

The two leaders appeared to set a new tone in relations, promising cooperation on a host of issues. The Obama administration's attempt to engage Moscow marks a break from the Bush administration, which didn't like extensive arms control negotiations and angered Moscow with its intention to install a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.