Analysis: Russia offers to work with US
By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- The mutual fear of radical Islamic terror
is propelling the United States and Russia toward a possible far
reaching global cooperation undreamed of only two weeks ago.
Cautious Russian President Vladimir Putin is stopping far short of
military cooperation with the United States when it moves against
accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, America's main suspect for
the terrible Sept. 11 hijacked airliner terrorist attacks that destroyed
the World Trade Center in New York and took nearly 7,000 lives.
But Putin has already approved highly significant support and
cooperation with the United States over dealing with Afghanistan, and
senior Russian officials and diplomats have made clear that if the
United States heeds their concerns in key policy areas, they are ready
and able to step up their cooperation too.
Last Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, speaking at
Washington's Monarch Hotel, called for a broadly based global effort to
strengthen international law and international institutions to combat
terror.
And Ivanov told the dinner, co-sponsored by the Washington-based Nixon
Center and the Moscow International Petroleum Club, that Russia and the
United States use the catastrophe of Sept. 11 to build a "qualitatively
new" relationship between them.
None of this was imaginable before Black Tuesday, Sept. 11. For its
first eight months in office, the Bush administration appeared to go out
of its way to ignore Russian concerns on key issues. It proceeded on the
apparent assumption that Russia no longer mattered as a major power and
it therefore did not matter what the Russians thought on anything.
The administration announced it was prepared to unilaterally leave the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rather than seek to build its new
ABM system in cooperation with the Russians within an amended framework
of that treaty.
And in a June 15 speech in Warsaw, President Bush made clear he was
determined to expand the NATO military alliance to include further
nations in Central and Eastern Europe, including at least one and
possibly all of the three Baltic states that were part of the Soviet
Union -- though not by their own choice -- until 1990.
But after the awful catastrophe of Black Tuesday, U.S. strategic and
global priorities underwent a seismic upheaval. All of a sudden,
cooperation with Russia to bring military and other pressure to bear on
Afghanistan -- one of the fiercest, most primitive and inaccessible
nations in the world -- becoming an overriding U.S. national priority.
Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov met President Bush and Secretary of
State Colin Powell during his visit to Washington last week. Both
Russian and U.S. sources say the talks were constructive and went
extremely well.
In a televised address to the Russian nation Monday, Putin announced new
initiatives that certainly appeared to confirm these assessments. Russia
would boost its support for the Northern Alliance that opposes the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan that is believed to be protecting bin
Laden, he said. This aid would involve sending its armed forces
"additional help in the form of arms and military equipment," Putin
said.
Putin also pledged to share crucial intelligence from Russia's still
formidable SVR foreign intelligence service with the U.S. And he opened
Russia's air space to flights carrying humanitarian aid.
Putin stopped far short of offering any Russian air or military bases as
staging posts for U.S. forces attacking remote, inaccessible
Afghanistan. Nor did he allow U.S. aircraft to overfly Russian airspace
on military missions in support of such operations.
Ivanov said at the Monarch Hotel last Wednesday that the issue of
deploying NATO forces "had not been raised" at that point in
U.S.-Russian bilateral consultations concerning responses to the
attacks.
But Putin left the door open for those, and other forms, of cooperation
in the future.
"The depth and quality of this cooperation will be directly dependent on
the general level and quality of our relations with these countries and
on mutual understanding in the battle with international terrorism," the
Russian president said.
Russian officials have made very clear to the U.S. government and to
other American interlocutors some of the conditions they would demand to
boost such cooperation.
"The Russian agenda is fighting Muslim fundamentalists in Chechnya,"
said Dimitri Simes, president of the Washington-based Nixon Center, and
a leading expert on U.S.-Russian relations. "They want to be sure that
in any agreement (between the United States and Russia) the Chechen
issue is also included."
The new and growing amity between the United States and Russia in
fighting the specter of Islamic extremism that now threatens both is
not, however, without its problems and uncertainties.
When Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
Affairs John Bolton visited Moscow after the destruction of the Twin
Towers in New York, Russian officials said they were "taken aback" by
what they said were Bolton's demands that Russia accept the U.S.
position on missile defense and other issues.
Russian officials described Bolton's remarks as "out of tone" with the
language of cooperation and partnership they said they had heard from
president Bush and secretary of State Colin Powell.
Simes said that uncertainty still persisted in Moscow over the future
direction of U.S. policy toward Russia,
"The Russians are asking themselves: 'Are there good cops and bad cops
in the Bush administration?'" he said. "Did Bolton just speak out of
turn? Or does the administration really expect to continue 'business as
usual' with Moscow along the lines (laid out) before Sept.11?
"The Russians are still concerned that even if they cooperate fully with
the United States (on Afghanistan and terror), their own priorities are
going to be ignored by Washington," Simes said.
The message that both Putin and Ivanov brought was clear. Russia's
current leadership still hopes to build a close partnership with the
United States. But it will not be on terms that the United States alone
dictates.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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