ConspiracyBuff
07-16-2006, 06:46 AM
Cold War echoes as Putin clashes with Bush at G8:
PRESIDENTS Vladimir Putin and George Bush exchanged barbed remarks yesterday at the start of a summit, confirming that relations between Moscow and Washington are at their lowest point since the Cold War.
It was all there in the body language. The two arrived for a press conference at the summit venue in St Petersburg with gloomy expressions, and the reasons were soon clear.
Russia's attempt to persuade America to let it into the World Trade Organisation - Russia is the biggest economy outside the group - had collapsed in the early hours of the morning.
America's refusal was a humiliation for Moscow, whose finance minister Alexei Kudrin had been reported declaring the talks a success two days before. President Bush said of this: "Evidently there was a false report."
The two men then announced the failure to agree even a minimum joint approach to end the fighting now raging in Lebanon. President Bush blamed Hezbollah for the carnage, refusing to criticise Israel, while Putin said both sides had to pull back.
Then came the issue of democracy. Russia is smarting from weeks of criticism from Washington about Putin's alleged backsliding on democracy. Bush rubbed salt in the wound on Friday: within minutes of getting off the plane he had a meeting with 15 human rights groups that accuse Putin of being an autocrat.
Yesterday Bush returned to the subject: "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion," he said of his morning talks with Putin. "And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."
This was too much for Putin, who shot back: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq."
Laughter broke out among the hundreds of watching journalists but Bush wasn't smiling.
"I have never seen our officials with looks of such disappointment," said one Russian journalist, and her American colleagues felt the same.
Both men tried to salvage pride by pointing to an agreement to limit the spread of nuclear technology, but the deal looked scripted and, in view of the fighting raging in Lebanon, very much beside the point....
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1034312006
PRESIDENTS Vladimir Putin and George Bush exchanged barbed remarks yesterday at the start of a summit, confirming that relations between Moscow and Washington are at their lowest point since the Cold War.
It was all there in the body language. The two arrived for a press conference at the summit venue in St Petersburg with gloomy expressions, and the reasons were soon clear.
Russia's attempt to persuade America to let it into the World Trade Organisation - Russia is the biggest economy outside the group - had collapsed in the early hours of the morning.
America's refusal was a humiliation for Moscow, whose finance minister Alexei Kudrin had been reported declaring the talks a success two days before. President Bush said of this: "Evidently there was a false report."
The two men then announced the failure to agree even a minimum joint approach to end the fighting now raging in Lebanon. President Bush blamed Hezbollah for the carnage, refusing to criticise Israel, while Putin said both sides had to pull back.
Then came the issue of democracy. Russia is smarting from weeks of criticism from Washington about Putin's alleged backsliding on democracy. Bush rubbed salt in the wound on Friday: within minutes of getting off the plane he had a meeting with 15 human rights groups that accuse Putin of being an autocrat.
Yesterday Bush returned to the subject: "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion," he said of his morning talks with Putin. "And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."
This was too much for Putin, who shot back: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq."
Laughter broke out among the hundreds of watching journalists but Bush wasn't smiling.
"I have never seen our officials with looks of such disappointment," said one Russian journalist, and her American colleagues felt the same.
Both men tried to salvage pride by pointing to an agreement to limit the spread of nuclear technology, but the deal looked scripted and, in view of the fighting raging in Lebanon, very much beside the point....
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1034312006