President George W Bush last week committed the United States to a new era of unprecedented partnership with Russia as he and President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty scrapping two-thirds of their long-range nuclear warheads and delivered a joint declaration redefining relations between the two countries.
Amid the gilt and turquoise splendour of the Kremlin’s St Andrew’s Hall, the two leaders put on a performance that smacked of male bonding and agreed a package of joint endeavours from cooperation on missile defence and combating terrorism to developing Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves.
“This sets the stage for incredible cooperation that we’ve never had before between our countries,” said Bush after both presidents signed the strategic offensive reductions treaty that pledges the US and Russia to slash their strategic nuclear warheads to a maximum of 2 200 from current levels of 6 000 by 2012.
The signing summit was the fifth such meeting between the two leaders in less than a year and by far the most productive.
The chemistry between the two men is clearly extremely strong and Bush in particular went out of his way to pay “tribute” repeatedly to the Russian president’s “leadership and vision”.
As the two men signed the arms cuts treaty and shook hands, Putin put his arm around Bush’s shoulders. White House commentators said Bush is smitten with the Russian leader. The warmth of the talks suggested that the former Texas governor is keener on the former KGB colonel than most West European allied leaders, with the exception of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The joint declaration said: “The era in which the US and Russia saw each other as an enemy or strategic threat has ended. The US and Russia are already acting as partners and friends in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.”
The sole bone of contention last Friday was the US objections to Russian links to Iran’s nuclear energy and missile development programmes. But Putin robustly defended the Russian policy, which he insisted contained no danger of nuclear proliferation and in the verbal exchanges at least got the better of Bush.
Bush told a Kremlin press conference he had raised the Iranian issue with Putin. “We spoke very frankly and honestly about the need to make sure that a non-transparent government run by radical clerics doesn’t get their hands on weapons of mass destruction … He gave me some assurances that I think will be very comforting.”
Putin then promptly offered little comfort to the Americans, attacking the US project of building a nuclear power plant for North Korea, voicing “concern” at missile programmes in Taiwan and maintaining that major Western companies were involved in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile projects.
With both sides agreeing that action to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a central element of the new partnership, Washington is convinced that the biggest danger is Iran and that Russia is its main facilitator.
US officials stressed that Iran, the world’s main sponsor of terrorism according to the US State Department, was a key issue in last week’s talks and that both sides have launched a “very constructive engagement on this”.
Both sides agreed to beef up their cooperation on the war in Afghanistan and to upgrade a joint committee on Afghanistan to one dedicated to combating terrorism more broadly.
As well as signing the arms cuts treaty, they also mapped out a framework for cooperating on America’s plans for a national missile shield, collaboration that will inevitably mute the Russian opposition to the project. But the wording was left vague enough for both sides to manoeuvre.