Jim Hoagland, Washington Post Writers Group. Chicago
Tribune. December 8, 2000
WASHINGTON -- Russia's President Vladimir Putin will travel to Cuba next
week on a journey that underlines the "assertive but positive"
attitude he will adopt with the next president of the United States, according
to a senior Russian official.
The timing of the trip--initially disclosed by U.S. sources--is ruffling
feathers in the outgoing Clinton administration. Putin seems to some to be
taking advantage of the long post-election limbo in Washington to poke a thumb
in Washington's eye.
There are also questions about Putin including the head of Russia's atomic
energy ministry on the trip. The Russian president will fly across U.S. airspace
after visiting Havana to start a visit to Canada on Dec. 15.
The timing of the North American trip is unrelated to U.S. politics, the
visiting official and other Russian sources insist. It was agreed on in
September after Putin saw Cuban President Fidel Castro at the United Nations and
postponed when Cuba needed more time to prepare.
Putin's biggest interest in the trip is described not as geopolitics but as
finding ways to get Cuba to pay large Soviet-era debts.
Putin's decision to go ahead with the politically sensitive Cuba trip now
nonetheless is an unintended signal of its own.
Russia and other nations are factoring into their own policies the effect of
the contested American presidential election and the advent of a more evenly
divided Congress. Inevitably, foreign powers see room to pursue their interests
with more assertiveness. Among those openly intensifying challenges to U.S.
power during the limbo are Iraq, which has shut off oil exports, Iran, which has
intensified support for Islamic guerrilla operations against Israel, and Libya,
which has increasingly flouted an international travel ban backed by Washington.
In his year in power, Putin has worked to deepen Russian ties with those
three countries and with other Soviet-era clients. In his quest to collect back
debts and open new markets for the Russian economy, he seems unconcerned about
appearing to President Clinton to revive problems of the past rather than
cooperate with the United States on the world's regional conflicts.
Putin's outlook on future cooperation with Washington is "assertive but
positive," the visiting official countered, insisting that Putin's active
Third World diplomacy is not directed against the United States.
The Russian president used a visit to North Korea "to introduce Kim
Jong Il on the world stage as a different person," he continued. During her
recent visit to Pyongyang, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pursued
proposals Putin originally made to restrain North Korean missile development.
Moscow and Washington resumed talks at the expert level this week on
Russia's conventional arms sales to Iran, even though Russia on Dec. 1 formally
canceled a secret U.S.-Russia understanding that sought to restrain those sales,
the official added.
"Our attitude is not based on a memorandum. We can find ways to
cooperate without that," the official said. "We continue to talk to
Washington about U.S. concerns and try to understand them. We may not agree on
all points, but we want a full and continuing dialogue with the next
administration on this and other points, including arms control."
His comments, delivered with an unusual authority and precision for such
semipublic utterances, sought to emphasize common points of interest as he
sketched a rationale for Russia's constructive engagement with troublesome
states:
"After all, President Clinton seemed at one point in his presidency to
hope to visit Cuba, and maybe North Korea. When he was secretary of state, Jim
Baker discussed how Moscow might help the United States normalize with Cuba.
This is not intended as a signal."
But the Russian official acknowledged that the U.S. presidential campaign
and the Nov. 7 election results create new questions abroad about Washington's
attention, and intentions.
"With dialogue, we can get past" the campaign stereotype "that
this relationship was conducted by a bunch of crooks in the Kremlin and a bunch
of romantics in Washington. We averted more crises than is known, and created a
basis for cooperating with the next administration."
But there is a new risk created by the disputes of the presidential election
and the nearly even partisan divisions of the Senate and House, he concluded: "Foreign
policy is always an easy target in time of domestic troubles, in any nation."
That is one reason Putin should have considered delaying the Cuba trip
again. It may not be intended as a signal to Washington. But it will be an early
window on a relationship that seems headed for rockier times.
Jim Hoagland is a syndicated writer based in Washington, D.C. E-mail:...
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