Moscow, 1 December: The US President-elect Barack Obama's announcement that Hillary Clinton will be appointed Secretary of State and Robert Gates will be appointed Secretary of Defence does not give grounds to hope for a serious improvement in Russian-American relations, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the State Duma international affairs committee, thinks.

"These appointments do not provide for much optimism because they imply continuation rather than reformation of the White House's foreign policy concept", Kosachev told Interfax on Monday [1 December].

He noted that both Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates were known "as staunch supporters of the idea of the USA's global dominance and robust protection of American interests by any means".

"Both of them will not be more comfortable partners for their Russian counterparts. And the bilateral dialogue will not be less difficult than that at the time of George Bush's administration", the Russian MP thinks.

At the same time, he stressed that much would depend on Barack Obama's personal position after his inauguration. "Both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defence will act according to the new president's instructions. Of course, all foreign policy decisions will largely depend on the new US president's position", Kosachev stressed.

Therefore, it is still to be seen what personal approaches the new president and his national security adviser James Jones will have towards the most important foreign policy problems, he noted.

Konstantin Kosachev recalled that until 2007 George Bush's special adviser on Russia was "quite authoritative and constructive Thomas Graham". "However, after his resignation, this post remained vacant for a long time, and due to the incumbent president's lack of appreciation of this direction in the National Security Council, many problems in Russian-American relations only continued to escalate rather than to get resolved", the MP added.