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// Moscow received William Burns, but will hold talks with Barack Obama only Moscow to conduct political negotiations with Barack Obama only
11-13-2008 - Kommersant by Mikhail Zygar - Moscow, seemingly, is not going to conduct political negotiations with Washington until Barack Obama substitutes for George Bush. Yesterday's visit of Under Secretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns to Moscow was a failure — news agencies cited Kremlin sources as saying that Bush's administration “tries to put new U.S. President in a stalemate” using the current negotiations. Meanwhile yesterday it became known that Dmitry Medvedev's meeting with Barack Obama in Washington this weekend will not take place. U.S. political analysts, interrogated by Kommersant, stated that the relations of the two Presidents are unlikely to be as warm as George Bush and Vladimir Putin had.
It is possible to shift the meeting: Yesterday a high-ranking Washington official Under Secretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns visited Moscow for the first time after the end of the war in Georgia. According to the U.S. embassy’s press attaché, David Sifkin, former U.S. ambassador to Russia William Burns was to meet with a number of Russian politicians: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Presidential Aide Sergey Prikhodko, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, the Government’s Deputy Chief of Staff Yury Ushakov, and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. According to Mr Sifkin, a new round of ABM negotiations, planned for December, was to be highlighted during talks.
As a matter of fact, this news was sensational — after all, the Russian government in a pointed manner refused to have any contacts with the outgoing American administration, preferring to postpone addressing the matters till Barack Obama’s inauguration. Therefore William Burns' arrival could testify that Moscow decided to abandon its hard line and become more emollient towards George Bush's team. However, Mr Burns received such a cold welcome that it showed that Russia still sticks to its policy. After the end of the negotiations Russian news agencies began reporting their failure referring to high-ranking sources in the Kremlin.
The Government’s Deputy Chief of Staff Yury Ushakov stated that “neither party wants this pause to be absolutely empty”, therefore, according to Mr Ushakov, Russia and the U.S. will hold negotiations about START and the economy in the near future. Mr Ushakov said nothing about the next round of ABM negotiations in December.
It is obvious that Moscow expects Barack Obama to be more compliant during talks about ABM. However, Stephen Sestanovich, the foreign relations expert of the American Council and the former adviser to U.S. State Secretary Madeleine Albright, told Kommersant that “both Barack Obama and John McCain supported the idea of an antimissile shield against Iran, but expressed doubts over the project’s technical practicability.” According to Mr Sestanovich, “ABM will be deployed only in case there is an obvious threat posed by Iran. Even if the Russian military officials continue arguing that a small number of interceptors are a mortal threat to Russia, few people will listen to them.”
Nevertheless, Dmitry Medvedev won’t be able to discuss this problem with his future counterpart in Washington. Despite Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement that such an informal meeting during the economic summit of the G20 in Washington is rather probable, Barack Obama decided to abstain from premature negotiations with his future partners. Yesterday head of his transition team, John Podesta, stated that the next U.S. President decided not to come to Washington these days at all, staying at home in Chicago.
A source of Kommersant in the Kremlin confirmed that Dmitry Medvedev will have bilateral meetings with George Bush, China’s President Hu Jintao, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Washington. Meanwhile, according to the interlocutor of Kommersant, during their recent telephone conversation last Saturday, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev agreed to meet in the near future — however, obviously, it will happen already after the summit.
End of friendship: Vice President of the Heritage foundation, Kim Holmes, told Kommersant that it depends on Moscow whether Russian-American relations will change after Barack Obama’s inauguration. “I feel that confrontation with the USA is just what the Russian Government wants. It makes Vladimir Putin more popular at home, Russia appears a stronger player in the international arena, and Europeans are more fearful of it. If the Russian Government wants a confrontation, it will happen. In either case, it is impossible to say all the time that the U.S. is degrading and that Russia and China’s time has come, remaining a G8 member. Perhaps it no cold war, but it is not partnership any longer,” Mr Holmes considers.
Anyway, according to American political scientists, the warm relations, the U.S. and Russian Presidents tried to demonstrate every time they met, are in the past. Barack Obama is a much more reserved person than George Bush, and you can hardly expect him to quickly make friends with Dmitry Medvedev. “George Bush’s policy has been unintelligible. On the one hand, he invited Vladimir Putin to his ranch, called him his friend, and on the other hand, the U.S. lobbied for admitting Georgia to NATO, whereas Russia rebuffed it,” Kim Holmes told Kommersant. “If we have problems with Russia, it is pointless pretending that you see Putin's soul. It is necessary that someone tell him, “We are not friends any longer, and we are dissatisfied with what you do.”
John McCain’s defeat in the presidential election made the matter of excluding Russia from the G8 obsolete; however, American analysts believe that after the war in Georgia and the economic crisis the G8 will never be the same again. “I cannot imagine that Russia is excluded from the G8 or it is necessary to explain to Russia why it is not excluded. But it is possible to imagine that the Group of Eight will cease to exist at all. Most likely, its place will be taken by an extensive group of the world’s largest economies. Probably, there will be a smaller group of democracies within that group, and it won’t include Russia,” Stephen Sestanovich opines.
Evidently, such an organization already exists. It is the G20, gathering in Washington this weekend; apart from the G8, the new body includes Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the Republic of South Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, China, India, South Korea, Indonesia and Australia, as well as the EU. The Group of Seven can easily co-exist with the Group of 20. And Barack Obama is unlikely to insist on adding Russia to it.