US White House
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 4, 2008
Press Briefing by Dana Perino [excerpt re Russia]
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
Q Dana, I missed the top of the briefing, so forgive me; if you've already addressed this, just stop me. On Russia, what's the message being sent by not congratulating Medvedev? Every statement that's come out of State, out of here, always avoids saying, we congratulate him, the President congratulates him, whatever. What's the purpose of that?
MS. PERINO: I don't know of any purpose, necessarily. I think that what the President did today was call the President-elect of Russia. They had a very good first conversation. You'll recall that they actually met in 2004, had brief conversation there. The President doesn't know him very well, as you heard him say last week.
He's established a good relationship with President Putin, in that they've had their difficulties over the years -- I think the President described it as "diplomatic head butts," and I think that's an accurate description. But I also know that at the -- that the President and President Putin have long believed that having a good relationship between our two countries is in our interests on a variety of levels, especially when it comes to counterterrorism, non-proliferation issues. And I would note that Russia yesterday joined the U.N. Security Council in unanimously voting for a third round of sanctions against Iran, to make sure that Iran does not have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.
So there's lots of different ways that we can cooperate with President-elect Medvedev, and we'll look forward to working with him. Obviously, the President will be talking to President Putin between now and May 7th.
Q Do you know when the first meeting between the President and Medvedev would be, and would it be an international summit, or would it be a bilat?
MS. PERINO: I think it's unclear. There's several meetings that are coming up, and I don't know about the EU summit or G8. I don't know who is going to be going.
Q Where did they meet in '04?
MS. PERINO: I'll find out for you. I just know that they met in '04. It was at one of these international meetings.
Q Dana, to be clear, in this call, he did not do something he routinely does with elected Presidents all over the world, which is say "congratulations"?
MS. PERINO: He did what he routinely does with lots of Presidents-elect around the world, which is call to say thank you for taking my call, and I look forward to working with you.
I'm not going to get into the word game about congratulations or not congratulations. Our position about the Russian elections leading up to it have been well-known, and our concerns were expressed from the beginning. At this point, they now have the President-elect. He will be -- he will take office on May 7th. And President Bush believes it is very important that we continue to have good relationship with Russia. It's in both of our countries' interests.
We don't believe that Russia, going forward, should have anything to fear about having multi-party elections, more free speech, more access for media, and a free press. There's lots of issues that we've had to work out, and I would just point you to the past comments about these elections, but also that the President is looking forward, and that's why he called him today.
Q Dana, Senator McCain said that the Russian election wouldn't pass the smell test of any functioning democracy. He said that the elections were clearly rigged, the opposition was repressed. So just so I'm clear, the White House position now is still that essentially, let's let the observers make a final determination? Or are you just moving beyond, now, the election, and looking forward to working with him?
MS. PERINO: I respect Senator McCain's views. I'm not going to comment in any way to try to get myself involved in the '08 election. But what I will say is that our position about the run-up to the elections in Russia was well-known. Our concerns were expressed not just from this podium, not just from the State Department, but from President Bush to President Putin himself. But it should be noted the President Bush realizes that what we need to do now is make sure that we establish a good foundation of a relationship that we can have going forward with President-elect Medvedev, who will take office on May 7th.