Obama cancels Moscow summit with Putin
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The Kremlin voiced disappointment yesterday with US President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel his Moscow summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but said that it remains ready to cooperate with the United States on bilateral and international issues.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Obama’s decision reflected America’s inability to develop relations with Moscow on an “equal basis.”
At the same time, he said that the invitation to Obama to visit Moscow next month still stands and added that “Russian representatives are ready to continue working together with American partners on all key issues on the bilateral and multilateral agenda.”
The cancellation of the summit underscores US dismay over Russia’s harboring of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, as well as disagreements on other key issues.
Snowden, an NSA systems analyst accused of leaking highly secretive details about the agency’s surveillance programs, first fled from the US to Hong Kong, then made his way to Russia. He was stuck in the transit zone of a Moscow airport for more than a month before Russia granted him one-year asylum last week.
Ushakov said Russia had no choice but to offer asylum to Snowden in the absence of a bilateral extradition agreement.
“This decision is clearly linked to the situation with former agent of US special services (Edward) Snowden, which hasn’t been created by us,” he said.
He sought to turn the tables on the US, accusing it of stonewalling on Russia’s proposal to sign a bilateral extradition agreement.
“For many years, the Americans have avoided signing an extradition agreement,” he said. “And they have invariably responded negatively to our requests for extradition of people who committed crimes on the territory of Russia, pointing at the absence of such agreement.”
A top White House official said yesterday Obama still attends to plan the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, but has no plans to meet with Putin there one-on-one.
Obama said in an interview on Tuesday that he was “disappointed” by Russia’s move to grant Snowden asylum for one year. He said it also reflected the “underlying challenges” the US faces in dealing with Russia.
“There have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality,” Obama said on NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”
Obama and Putin last met in June on the sidelines of the Group of 8 summit in Northern Ireland.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US told the Russian government yesterday morning that Obama believed “it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda.”
Instead of visiting Putin in Moscow, Obama will add a stop in Sweden to his early September travel itinerary.
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