United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted there was no reason to speak of a new Cold War with Russia as she arrived in Moscow on Monday for talks aimed at halting a dramatic slide in relations.
Parallels drawn by some Russian officials with the era of the East-West Cold War were misplaced, Rice said as she prepared for meetings, including with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
”I think the parallels just frankly have no basis whatsoever … It’s not an easy time for the relationship. It’s not. But it’s also not a time in which I think any sort of cataclysmic things are happening,” Rice said.
”There are some things that are going very well, some things that are going less well … and some things that are very problematic. But it’s critically important to use this time to enhance those things that are going well and to work on those things that are not going well,” she said.
Rice’s visit follows a sharp downturn in relations sparked by US military activity in countries that in Soviet times were ruled, often unwillingly, from Moscow.
In particular, Moscow has sharply criticised US plans to place elements of a missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland.
The United States and Poland were to begin formal talks on Monday on plans to place interceptor rockets in Poland as part of the shield, which Moscow fiercely opposes.
Rice said Washington was taking steps to involve Moscow in the plans.
She reiterated Washington’s insistence that the defence system is not directed against Russia but is needed to defend against new potential threats, notably from Iran.
”We’ve made some very forward-leaning proposals for missile defence cooperation and I look forward to discussing those further … This is a limited missile defence system that is aimed at emerging threats,” Rice said.
”It would be, I think, irresponsible not to look to technology as a way to deal with these limited threats,” she said.
Rice was to start her visit on Monday by having dinner with First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Ivanov, who oversees the military-industrial sector of the economy, is seen as a favourite to replace Putin after elections next March.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mikhail Kamynin said that any discussion of missile defence issues in Europe should ”meet the security interests of all European states” and be discussed collectively, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Nikolai Bordyuzha, head of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which unites several ex-Soviet states, said Washington was trying to surround Russia and its neighbours with a ”military structure” that he likened to a ”loaded gun”.
Also aggravating relations has been US criticism of Putin’s democracy record and the Kremlin’s unease with plans for Kosovo’s independence.
Despite Rice’s reassuring comments, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper wrote on Monday that Moscow and Washington had lost all trust and now see each other as a threat.
Rice’s visit ”begins a new phase in … relations. As in the days of the USSR, Washington will be guided by a doctrine of ‘strategic patience”’, the paper said.
The deterioration in relations has been evident since Putin made a frontal assault on US foreign policy in a speech in the German city of Munich in February.
Last month Putin said Russia was freezing compliance with a key accord on European security, the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.
Earlier, Rice made clear that the US was wary of Putin’s leadership.
”I think everybody around the world, in Europe, in the US, is very concerned about the internal course that Russia has taken,” she told a Senate committee last week.
She said Putin had overseen a rollback of democratic reforms, undermining the independence of the legislature, the media and judiciary.
Rice was due to meet representatives of Russian NGOs on Tuesday. Civil society has come under pressure during Putin’s rule, particularly groups receiving Western funding.
A US-backed plan currently before the United Nations to grant supervised independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo has also added to tensions.
A long-time ally of Serbia, Russia says any settlement must have the backing of both sides.
State Department officials said Rice would broach all these subjects on a trip designed to smooth relations ahead of next month’s group of eight summit in Germany, when Putin will meet with President George Bush.
The so-called Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies began soon after the end of World War II and lasted until the Soviet collapse in 1991. — AFP
