Wonder how the NATO Summit in Bucharest is being covered in the Russian press? Russian concerns about the meeting, infighting over why President Putin isn’t being given a platform to speak at the summit, and the details of Thursday’s events are all covered in somewhat excruciating detail in this analysis from Russia’s Kommersant. Apparently, the Kremlin is upset that President Putin won’t be able to address the public at the conference, suspicious that the Alliance is trying to prevent a repeat of his Munich Speech of last year, in which Putin criticized the United States.
According to Dmitry Rogozin, Russian Ambassador to NATO, “The leadership of the Alliance is committed to curtailing most of the debate. The Russian President will be unable speak publicly on the most important questions of world politics. This is an ugly spectacle, and attempts to blame it on the rules are inappropriate.
By Mikhail Zygar and Vladimir Solovyev
Translated By Igor Medvidev
April 2, 2009
Kommersant – Russia – Original Article (Russian)
The NATO summit opens today in Bucharest, and it may be the most scandalous summit in the history of the organization. Ukraine and Georgia will attempt to obtain entry into the Alliance’s Membership Action Plan, while Russia and its key economic partners try to prevent this. The format of the Russia-NATO meetings won’t give Putin a chance to make another Munich speech. But the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov will be given a chance to speak.
[Editor’s Note: In his speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last year, President Putin said, among other things, “One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? And of course this is extremely dangerous. The result of this is that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this no one feels safe! Because no one feels that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them!”
ANTI-MUNICH
Even before the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s participation is a source of controversy. The Russian leader arrives in Bucharest on Thursday to participate in a meeting of the Russia-NATO council on Friday, the summit’s final day. But the day before the summit, the Russian side accused the Alliance of intending to deprive President Putin of the chance to be speak.
Significantly, Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin, when asked in an interview published in the Moskovsky Komsomolets on March 31 whether the Russian president would make another “Munich speech” in Bucharest, said that such a thing would be impossible because of the format of the NATO summit. “The Munich speech was addressed to the public and not so much to people making the decisions. In Bucharest things will be quite the opposite. The entire discussion of the Russia-NATO council will be held in the usual format – private.”
But by the evening of the same day, Rogozin expressed a different point of view.
For example, Rogozin noted that the agenda for the Ukraine-NATO and Russia-NATO councils were set up differently: In the first instance, opening speeches would be given by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. In the latter instance, only de Hoop Scheffer would speak. After the Ukraine-NATO meeting, de Hoop Scheffer and Yushchenko are to hold a joint press conference, while, after the second, de Hoop Scheffer alone is to hold one. Rogozin concluded that “the leadership of the Alliance is committed to curtailing most of the debate. The Russian President will be unable speak publicly on the most important questions of world politics. This is an ugly spectacle, and attempts to blame it on the rules are inappropriate.”
But at NATO headquarters, Kommersant was assured that, “the format of the NATO-Russia Council was indeed unchanged. The fact if that back in 2002, that format of that body was altered in accord with Russia’s wishes. In the past, the NATO secretary general and the Russian representative sat at the podium together, and representatives of the NATO member states sat at a common table. In 2002, when Russia became an equal partner in NATO and its representative (who in Bucharest will be Putin) took a seat at the table with the presidents of the member states, who are seated in alphabetic order according to the names of the countries – so Putin will sit between Romanian President Trajan Basescu and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. So since 2002, the sole chairman of the council has been the NATO secretary general. He opens the meeting, after which the press is removed from the auditorium and the council members discuss their business.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the NATO Summit.
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