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MOSCOW - A senior Russian lawmaker called Monday for deployment
of an MOSCOW (AP) - Ahead of a Russian-U.S. summit next month,
Russians increasingly are asking what rewards they have reaped
from joining the U.S.-led anti-terrorist coalition and where President
Vladimir Putin pro-Western policy is leading the nation.
Summing up the negative attitude of many politicians, political
analysts and journalists, one lawmaker reminded a round-table
discussion on Russian-U.S. cooperation that many had warned Putin
about trusting America.
"The majority, who didn't support the president's plans from
the beginning, now are washing their hands of them, saying 'We
warned you, you won't get anything from the Americans,'"
said lawmaker Alexei Arbatov on Tuesday.
The meeting was just one of many recent public discussions that
have highlighted the wide gap between Putin and the majority of
Russian opinion-makers on foreign policy questions. President
Bush will meet Putin during a May 23-26 visit to Moscow and St.
Petersburg.
Putin surprised many by enthusiastically joining the anti-terrorist
coalition after Sept. 11, offering to share intelligence, open
air corridors for humanitarian flights and aid in search-and-rescue
missions.
Leonid Ivashov, a former high-ranking Defense Ministry official,
likened Russia's moves after Sept. 11 to "an attempt at geostrategic
suicide."
Putin raised eyebrows further by giving the green light to U.S.
troop deployments in formerly Soviet Central Asia and astounded
many Russians when he calmly accepted the imminent arrival of
U.S. military instructors in Georgia, on Russia's tense southern
flank.
The government insists on the need to stand by the international
fight against terrorism, which it says threatens Russia as well,
pointing to the war with separatists in Chechnya.
But even state media "portray all these cooperative moves
by him almost as treason," former Russian Foreign Minister
Andrei Kozyrev told the American Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.
Objecting to what they characterized as a Russian foreign policy
retreat, many Russians had hoped the new thaw in relations between
Washington and Moscow would bring tangible results in policy and
possibly economic benefits.
But Russia has instead seen some real setbacks to its foreign
policy goals: Bush elected to dump the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, which Moscow had vowed to save, and NATO marching steadily
toward further eastern expansion, which Moscow has vehemently
opposed.
Washington has not yet delivered the long-sought cancellation
of the Soviet-era Jackson-Vanick amendment, which makes trade
concessions contingent on Russia's human rights performance, or
the declaration of Russia as a market economy - which would lower
import tariffs and ease Moscow's way into the World Trade Organization.
On the positive side, the United States has initiated a bilateral
business forum to discuss cooperation, but the two nations have
clashed over new U.S. steel tariffs and Russia's recent suspension
of U.S. poultry imports.
"What's happened over the past half-year in the economic
relations of our countries?" asked Alexander Livshits, a
top economic adviser to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin
and a former envoy to the Group of Eight. "They crushed our
steel, along with the steel of other countries, created an American-Russian
business dialogue, and we quarreled about chickens."
See also:
International
Anti-Terror Coalition
Russia's
ABM Initiatives
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