Condi Meets the Russians

Posted on April 21, 2005

According to Fox News, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin was pretty tense.

When a high-level meeting between governments has not gone especially well, the participants sometimes speak afterward of their "frank exchange of views." Such was apparently the case on Wednesday in Moscow, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But on issue after issue -- the pace of Russia's democratization, restrictions on foreign oil investors and the security of Russian nuclear materials -- the secretary spoke only of differences aired, not of tangible progress made. At one point, her host, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, responded sarcastically to Rice's exhortations.
"I would say, like the U.S. is interested in a strong and a democratic Russia that could play its active role internationally, we are also interested that the U.S. should be a strong and democratic partner and country playing an active role internationally," said Lavrov.

Our Secretary of State apparently took Mr. Putin to task for 1) making it difficult or impossible for U.S. oil firms to bid on jobs in Russia 2) Putin's crackdown on the independent media and 3) Russia's slowdown on the joint American-Russian dismantling of Soviet-area nuclear sites. Apparently, Putin wants us to clean up all the hazardous material (and I hear there's quite a bit of it) and indemnify Russia if there's some kind of horrible industrial accident during the clean-up operations.

Did you notice that the minute she was sworn in as secretary of state she immediately took off for the far side of the planet? I mean, they hardly let Colin Powell out of Washington, and now Condi is already on track to be the most-traveled Secretary of State in American history. Maybe she's just trying to get away from the Bolton confirmation hearings. And who could blame her for that?