Vladimir Putin warned the US last night not to go it alone against Iraq, sounding a note of caution after an otherwise warm welcome to President Bush in Russia.
On the icy steps of the Tsarskoye Selo palace at Pushkin, near Putin’s home town of St Petersburg, the Russian president said both countries could gain ”positive results” in the quest to disarm Iraq if they acted ”jointly”.
He said that the US should stay firmly within the limits of the UN Security Council resolution 1441 on Iraq, adding that it had only been achieved after ”a large amount of difficult work”.
The presidents added meat to the bones of their widely publicised personal entente, by both calling on Saddam Hussein to disarm and honour the UN resolution.
Their joint statement threatened ”serious consequences” for non-compliance.
They built on the growing links between their separate wars on ”terror”, strengthened since Chechen rebels held 800 people hostage in a Moscow theatre last month.
Putin said the world ”should not give any chances to those who are involved in terrorism and support terrorists”. He pointed out that 16 of the 19 men involved in the September 11 attacks were Saudi citizens. ”We will remember this,” he said.
Bush’s lightning visit to Russia, which US officials said came about after Putin said his country needed assuring that an enlarged Nato posed no threat, lasted a little over four hours. Putin said that they had 80 minutes of ”fruitful and frank” talks.
Before leaving for Latvia, a prospective Nato member, Bush pledged to return to St Petersburg to help celebrate its 300th anniversary in May.
Putin reiterated his view that Nato enlargement was ”not necessary”, but added that he could ”not exclude deeper relations between us and the alliance, if its activities are in line” with Russian security interests.
Responding to these concerns, Bush said: ”The mood of the Nato countries is this: Russia is our friend.
”We’ve got a lot of interests together. We must continue our cooperation in the war against terror.”
In Prague yesterday at the new Nato-Russia council — set up to mollify Moscow — the foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, confirmed Russia’s standard opposition to Nato’s expansion.
”We have always said that Nato’s mechanical enlargement without a transformation of its military and political structures is hardly in keeping with new ideas of security and co-operation in the Euro-Atlantic sphere,” he said.
Other Russians were more upbeat. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin’s main representative on Chechnya, told a Czech newspaper: ”It’s been three years since the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary entered Nato and this hasn’t resulted in any new threat to Russia. Not one.”
He dismissed the Baltic states’ eagerness to join Nato as a bid for ”psychological” comforts. ”By entering Nato the Baltic states mainly wish to achieve a psychological feeling of security. If entering Nato helps them get rid of stereotypes and be more constructive in their relations with Russia, we will welcome this.”
The US is also planning to downplay criticism of Russian policy in Chechnya and ensure that Moscow does not lose out economically if Saddam Hussein is replaced by a pro-western regime.
Washington has also dropped its insistence that Moscow should talk to the last elected Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov. Ever since the Moscow theatre siege, US officials have described him as ”damaged goods”. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001