Zee Beam News

May 2006 - Council on Forign Affairs - Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor Interviewee: Andrew Kuchins Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russian & Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says U.S.-Russian relations are "rather precarious" and could spiral downwards. The latest development was the speech given by Vice President Dick Cheney in Lithuania in which he criticized Russian internal policies, drawing sharp responses from the Kremlin.
But Kuchins points out that Cheney, while visiting oil-rich Kazakhstan on the same trip, delivered no criticism of its dictatorial ruler. Likewise, he says, the authoritarian president of Azerbaijan was welcomed without criticism in Washington recently.
"I think the Russians are struck by what looks to be a sort of breathtaking exercise of double standards on the part of the Bush administration," says Kuchins. He also says he believes that the administration felt it had to be tough in public on Moscow to allow President Bush to attend a scheduled G8 meeting in St. Petersburg this July...