Bush and Putin Smooth Out Their Differences?

See?!? I told you Bush was a smooth talker when he uses a translator…

“So I told Putin, you can stick that missile where the sun don’t shine..”

- HatTip to Blackdog

Analysis: U.S.-Russian rockets project?
Jun 7, 2007
Breitbart
HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 7 (UPI) — In what looked like a turn for the better for U.S.-Russian relations, Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm extended an offer to U.S. President George W. Bush to cooperate on missile defense by jointly using an existing radar station in Azerbaijan.

After both leaders met privately on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, they made a joint announcement to reporters Thursday afternoon.

Putin, with Bush smiling next to him, said both nations could cooperate to react to the “common threats” by jointly using an existing radar station near Gabala, Azerbaijan, as the base for a missile defense system. The Russian leader said he had talked to Azerbaijan’s president Wednesday and his agreement enabled Washington and Moscow to consider Putin’s offer.

“If we work together on countering the threats that we discussed today, while considering our mutual concerns, and if we make this work transparent and ensure equal access to this system, then we will have no problems,” Putin said. “It would also make it unnecessary for us to direct our offensive complexes toward Europe.”

Continuing a strategy the president has followed for the past days, Bush was also eager to ease the conflict, stating that “it is much better to work together than to create tensions.”

While he was noncommittal on Putin’s proposal, he said experts from both countries would soon discuss the details of missile defense approaches. He and Putin would continue to talk constructively about the issue, Bush pledged.

The latest meeting between the two leaders — the first in several months — was a far cry from what has happened recently between Moscow and Washington.

Over the weekend Putin launched the most daunting threat against the West yet, when he said the U.S. system, which foresees 10 bunker-protected rockets to be stationed in Poland and an accompanying radar unit in the Czech Republic, would force him to retarget Russia’s nuclear rockets toward Europe. Russia sees the missiles as a threat against its territory, despite U.S. pledges that Moscow needn’t be worried as the system was aimed at defending against rockets from rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

Putin bashed the United States’ “unilateralism” earlier this year at a security conference in Munich, where he also accused Washington of provoking a new Cold War-like arms race.

Asked if she had to mediate between the two rowing leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that she had the impression that all G8 leaders worked with each other in a very “constructive … and relaxed atmosphere.”

Bush earlier Thursday had stressed that the diplomatic row was “nothing we ought to be hyperventilating about.”

“What we ought to be doing is figuring out ways to work together,” the president added.

Apparently, they did. While the proposal may never come to reality, it has already managed to smooth the previously fierce rhetoric and create the basis for constructive talks on the issue.

Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser, called the meeting “very positive” and Putin’s proposal “interesting,” adding that it was “a good thing” that Putin had delivered a “positive response” to the president’s call for cooperation.

“President Bush wanted to de-escalate tensions,” and in that, he succeeded, Hadley said.

Paul Saunders, executive director of the Nixon Center and a seasoned Russia expert, told United Press International in a telephone interview Thursday the offer was a “very encouraging” development after the rhetoric between the leaders had been so aggressive.

He added, however, that both nations had often pledged to work together, commitments that all ended without concrete results, he said.

“As always, and this is true for this proposal as well, the devil will be in the details.”

The next opportunity to talk about the details of cooperation on missile defense will be next month, when Putin joins Bush for bilateral talks at the family’s summer retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine. Bush said it was very important to him that the Russian leader would see “my folks’ place in Maine.”

Explore posts in the same categories: Cold War II, Conspiracy Theories, G.W. Bush, Globalization, Russian Connection, human interest