Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama after holding talks
on a
variety of contentious
issues, at the G20 Summit in Mexico, June 19.
Obama's ‘Hope’ Keeps
Putin from ‘Window on Paradise’ (MoskovskijKomsomolets, Russia)
“After two hours
of discussion in Mexico with Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama looked exhausted. It
was as if he were the one who had plunged into work after a 15-hour flight to a
time zone 10-hours different than home. Putin, by contrast, was smiling and
looked refreshed. The mood between the two presidents clearly testified to
which of the two got the upper hand.”
Sergei Magnitsky: His death in a Russian prison, after implicating top officials in a complex scheme to defraud the government, is widely regarded as a murder-cover-up in the West. Moscow is warning the if that U.S. Congress passes the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act as punishment, Russia will react in kind against Americans suspected of human rights abuse in places like Guantanamo and Iraq.
Los Cabos, Mexico: After
two hours of discussion in Mexico with Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama looked
exhausted. It was as if he were the one who had plunged into work after a
15-hour flight to a time zone 10-hours different than home. Putin, by contrast,
was smiling and looked refreshed. The mood between the two presidents clearly
testified to which of the two got the upper hand in the talks.
The meeting was held in a banquet hall: the Pacific Ocean
lapped the shore no more than 30 feet away, and the entirety of the Hotel Esperanza
(Hope), which housed the American delegation, was filled with the aroma of
freshly-caught fish being cooked on the grill. Nevertheless, the two leaders confined
themselves to coffee. Even in terms of their appearance, the presidents made no
concessions to the resort atmosphere at Los Cabos,
where they were attending the G20 summit: both kept their jackets on and their
ties knotted. Yet not more than a month ago, Obama spoke on a bench at Camp
David with Dmitri Medvedev with no jacket or tie.
Given the backlog of acute issues, there were plenty of
reasons to stick to formal attire. Neither Putin nor Obama skirted the theme of
the deployment in Eastern Europe of the U.S. anti-missile defense system (Russia
continues to insist on written guarantees that the system won’t target it), and
they discussed the “Justice
for Sergei Magnitsky Act,” which has already victimized
a number of Russians who have been denied entry into the United States. [See photo box].
“There is complete understanding on both sides that legislative
developments surrounding this situation will lead to retaliatory measures,”
noted the Russian president's press secretary, Dmitri Peskov.
In other words, the Americans have already been shown that if they deny entry
visas to 11 Russian officials connected to the Magnitsky
case, the denial of entry visas to Russia for 11 members of the U.S.
administration, who are connected to cases no less significant, will immediately
follow.
The position of the two presidents on the issue of Syria was
cemented in their
joint statement. “We are united in our belief that the Syrian people should
have the opportunity to independently and democratically choose their own
future,” it states. “…We express full support for the efforts of UN/League of
Arab States Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan, including moving forward on
political transition to a democratic, pluralistic political system that would
be implemented by the Syrians themselves in the framework of Syria's
sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity."
Not a word about the immediate removal of the Bashar al-Assad regime or sanctions against the country - a
favorite American talking point. That alone can be regarded as a diplomatic
victory for the Russian side.
However, Peskov, Putin’s press
secretary, who participated in the talks, insisted that the dialogue was not
harsh: “It was constructive and open.” Both sides agreed that “differences of
opinion should not be a stumbling block on the path to the development of bilateral
relations.” But for some reason, unlike with British Prime Minister David
Cameron, there was no exchange of football jokes between Putin and Obama. Or
gifts, as with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who brought Putin a
kimono of the Japanese Olympic judo team and a portrait of the founder of the
sport of judo – and that was after both Noda and Cameron were kept waiting for
about an hour at Putin’s hotel, the Las Ventanas
al Paraiso (Window to Paradise), because his meeting
with Obama ran late.
Posted
by Worldmeets.US
Putin was also late to the G20 Summit, which was the purpose
of his visit to Mexico. He was so late, in fact, that the Summit host, President
Felipe Calderón, who greeted all the leaders at the
gate, couldn’t stay long enough to greet Putin.
Nevertheless, Putin's appearance at Los Cabos
did not go unnoticed. Prior to meeting Obama, he had time to participate in the
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit,
where leaders of the five countries acknowledged that the eurozone
crisis was threatening enough to warrant increasing IMF funding by $430 billion.
Russia, for instance, intends to contribute $10 billion dollars, despite holding
to its position that increasing liquidity is only a temporary stop-gap measure
and not a strategic solution - and despite insisting on strict accountability
for every cent invested in the eurozone.
