Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

The next step?

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Friday 6 March meeting in Geneva between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could well enter the records as a key encounter, if US hopes for the meeting are realized. The United States and Russia have a long history of meeting on neutral territory in Geneva to discuss the state of the world and their own complex relationship. “There have been letters between the leaders, between the foreign ministers, outlining a way forward and a positive agenda, and it is on that that we want to build, but with our eyes open about some of the differences we have,” a State Department spokesman, Gordon Duguid, told a White House press briefing Friday 26 February.

Geneva has been the setting for many discussions on differences between the US and the Soviet Union, then later Russia, with mixed success. Talks have covered topics as wide-ranging as trade, armaments and human rights issues. One of the most dramatic encounters was the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev summit that signaled a beginning to the end of the Cold War.

While no one expects the  meeting between Clinton and Lavrov to achieve that level of change, the focus for Clinton’s first trip to Europe will be on “restarting relationships” in Duguid’s words. He noted Friday that “Much has been written about the phrase the vice-president used, and the president has used, of pressing the reset button. That is [an] effective metaphor for using the opportunity of a new American administration to capitalize on the many areas where the United States and Russia have common interests and can work in a common fashion, particularly in arms control.”

Russia’s news agency Novosti 16 February said the then-unconfirmed “meeting is seen as a sign of a thaw in relations between Moscow and Washington, strained over a host of issues, including US plans to deploy missile shield elements in Central Europe, which Russia strongly opposes.” Novosti pointed to media reports, presumably in the US, which said that “the new US administration is seeking a compromise on the missile shield dispute and Russia’s cooperation in preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb, one of the reasons cited for the missile shield.”

Novosti noted that, in speaking about “‘signals sent by the US administration,’” Russia’s deputy foreign minister “Ryabkov agreed that removing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program would pave the way for ‘more profound talks on cooperation on missile defense.’ The diplomat said Russia has shown no signs it will toughen its position on Iran at the current time. But he said international mediators in the long-running denuclearization talks should step up diplomacy with Tehran as ‘there is no alternative to political talks in addressing grounded international concerns about Iran’s compliance with UN resolutions.’”

Clinton will visit the Middle East at the start of the week, then head for Brussels where the set theme is reconnecting the United States with Europe, “consolidating some of this enormous political goodwill on both sides of the Atlantic, harnessing it to a common agenda – not an American agenda, but a common transatlantic agenda,” Duguid notes. Discussions will cover Nato’s relations with Russia, leading into the Geneva meeting on US-Russian relations.

The US has three points on which it remains firm: it will not recognize a Russian sphere of influence nor will it recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It insists that European countries have a right to seek membership in alliances, “a reference to Nato enlargement,” Duguid said at Friday’s press briefing.

Duguid emphasized that Clinton will be seeking balance in the US relationship with Russia: “The most productive way to move forward with Russia. . . is building on areas where we have common interests, but also mindful of our differences, not shying away from them nor abandoning our values and our friends. That makes for a complicated relationship with Russia, but we believe we can It is right to emphasize the positive. Our initial work with the Russians so far has been positive.”

Clinton will also meet, during the visit to Geneva on Friday, with Micheline Calmy-Rey, Switzerland’s foreign minister, but the agenda has not been announced. The meeting will come just four days after another Swiss Federal Council (cabinet) member, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Swiss justice and police minister, meets in Washington with the head of the US Justice Department, Eric Holder, who will discuss, among other matters, the legal situation of Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, in the face of charges pressed by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), the US tax authorities.