POLITICS: No Major Breakthrough at US-Russia Summit

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, Jun 6 2000 (IPS) - US President Bill Clinton and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin ended their first summit Monday with little progress on the major issues of arms control and Chechnya.

After six hours of talks the two leaders conceded remaining differences on a missile defence programme Washington plans to build which would require changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but pledged not to let the dispute sour relations. The United States says it needs this defence system to guard against “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran.

President Clinton is to decide by next Fall whether or not to deploy a limited missile shield system in Alaska by 2005.

Russia opposes modifications to the treaty, arguing that they would destroy the arms-control efforts of the last three decades. Moscow is also against limited missile defence being supported by China. Putin had warned that if Clinton chose to go ahead with a missile shield, Russia might abandon the whole regimen of arms control accords with the United States.

On Jun. 2 President Putin proposed during an interview on the US television network NBC, that Russia and the United States work jointly on nuclear defence against so-called rogue nations.

But the plan is not a new one, having been previously mooted during the 1980s, says The Oleg Ostroukhov, senior researcher with the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a Moscow-based think-tank.

The leaders also signed an agreement authorising the destruction of 34 tons of military-grade plutonium, enough to make close to 7,000 nuclear warheads. Disposing of the plutonium would cost a total of 5.75 billion dollars – 4 billion in the United States and 1.75 billion in Russia. The Russian plutonium is to be converted for use in civilian nuclear power reactors.

Some of the US material will be used for reactors, the rest will be buried. Neither side can use the material again for military purposes, says the agreement which also authorises the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor compliance.

The issue of Russia’s military action in Chechnya also figured high on the summit agenda. Lobbying groups, notably the New York- based Human Rights Watch (HRW), had urged Clinton to pressure Russia to end the war. They demanded a deadline for the start of prosecutions for alleged human rights violations and a demonstration of progress towards implementing the April 2000 UN Commission on Human Rights resolution on Chechnya. The resolution included a call to the Russian government to establish urgently an independent commission of inquiry.

HRW said the Russian government should be told that failure to make significant progress on implementing the UNCHR resolution before Jul. 1 will trigger US calls for an international commission of inquiry and will jeopardise US support in multilateral lending institutions for loans to Russia.

HRW officials in Moscow have argued that the US government’s policy toward violations in Chechnya had no bite because Washington has not been willing to suspend its support for international lending to Russia nor hold off the summit meeting.

During the summit talks, Clinton made it clear that he disagreed with Putin on Russia’s handling of the war in Chechnya and urged an investigation of human rights violations in the region.

“The inclusion of the issue of Chechnya into the summit’s agenda is encouraging, though it is too early to say if it could have a concrete impact,” Malcolm Hawkes, deputy director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

The Kremlin insists it is targeting only terrorists and rules out talks with Chechen militants.

As part of his three-day visit to Moscow, Clinton become the first US president ever to address the Russian Duma (parliament) as well as to speak to ordinary Russians on Ekho Moskvy radio. His visit to Ekho Moskvy radio was seen as a sign of support for press freedom in Russia, as Ekho Moskvy’s parent company Media-MOST, which also owns NTV, is now under intense government scrutiny.

As Clinton prepared to leave Moscow on Monday, Putin expressed satisfaction with his first summit with the US president. He said among the topics discussed were the new global threats of terrorism, organised crime and drug smuggling. The two men also signed a joint statement ordering experts to prepare a report on ways to deal with the new challenges confronting their countries.

In the statement, Clinton and Putin agreed that the new threats represented a potentially significant change in the global strategic situation and they agreed to tackle the problems together with mutual respect for each other’s security interests.

The leaders also reaffirmed the central role of the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty on arms control, and pledged to continue efforts to increase its effectiveness.