Russian pundits divided over success of Putin-Bush ABM discussions
Interfax
Moscow, 3 July: Russia's new initiatives in the area of missile defence represent an attempt to "seize the political initiative" and ease the tension around the missile defence issue, believes Aleksey Malashenko, political scientist and member of the Moscow Carnegie Centre's academic council.
"It is an attempt to definitively seize the initiative and somewhat ease the tension surrounding missile defence issues," Malashenko told Interfax on Monday evening [2 July], commenting on the meeting between the American and Russian presidents.
"After the proposals voiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin, it will be important to see how the Americans react. Obviously, these proposals will be discussed. But the question is what will the American specialists say, who basically rubbished Russia's proposals to share use of the Qabala radar station. The views of candidates for the US presidency are also important," added Malashenko.
He added that either way, the Russian proposals "ease the tension surrounding missile defence".
Director of the Centre for Political Technologies Igor Bunin believes that one could not really have expected any concrete results from the meeting between the US and Russian presidents.
"I don't think these talks could have resulted in anything concrete, since it concerns a very delicate issue. The most one could have expected was that Bush would propose that the military discuss use of the Qabala radar station after the meeting," Bunin told Interfax.
In addition, he believes that "the sides demonstrated that they are interested in each other, and interested in creating a system to counter rogue states".
At the meeting of the two presidents "concepts that are basically diametrically opposite" were put forward, said Bunin.
"On the one hand, the USA couldn't reject the idea of deploying missile defence components in Eastern Europe, since that would have meant dumping their allies. It seems that the USA had some kind of plan to tear Russia away from the rogue states," he added, commenting on the USA's position.
For its part, "Russia wanted to indirectly create a mechanism for cooperation, but the USA didn't want to make any promises," Bunin believes.
Bunin predicted that "in the future it will be possible to link these two concepts, although they are fairly contradictory".
He added that "Russia is not in the least afraid of the ten missiles that they are planning to deploy in Eastern Europe, but rather it fears becoming a zone of confrontation between Iran and Europe, and that missiles will fall on Russian territory".
Meanwhile, the head of the Russian office of the Centre for Defense Information Ivan Safranchuk believes that there is nothing positive for future US-Russian relations in the results of the two presidents' meeting.
"The fact that for the first time the two countries' presidents failed to reach agreement is a very bad sign for Russian-US relations," Safranchuk told Interfax.
He added that an "arms race" between Russia and the USA would not necessarily start straight after the meeting.
Moscow should have been able to understand whether Washington is prepared to "start playing the game fairly in Europe" following the meeting, he believes.
"In the end, Russia is drawing the conclusion that the USA is going to continue opposing the rebuilding of relations between Russia and Europe," said Safranchuk.