WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- It is important for President George W. Bush to look past short-term political goals and address more difficult issues in his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month, according to a team of policy experts on Russia and Central Asia from an influential Washington, D.C. think tank.
"What we have seen with other Presidents and other people (in the past) is thinking that this time is different, not paying attention to some of the (other) things going on, and only focusing on the positive ones," said Celeste Wallander, director of the Russia and Eurasian program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, at a briefing Monday.
"That is my big concern," Wallander stressed.
Bush and Putin are scheduled to hold their second summit from May 23 through May 26 in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Though the highlight of the summit will certainly be the agreement announced Monday to reduce the operationally deployed nuclear arsenal of the two counties by between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012, Wallander and her colleagues cautioned against letting this deal overshadow other critical issues that need to be addressed.
Under the nuclear reduction agreement, the warheads would not have to be destroyed, and both countries would be allowed to handle the dismantled weapons however they see fit. This provision has some critics concerned about the potential for nuclear materials to end up in the hands of rogue nations or terrorists, given Russia's past problems with tracking its nuclear stockpile.
But Wallander warned that focusing exclusively on the warhead reduction pact would help repeat past failures in the relationship between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
"I think it may be the case that the tangible results and success of the summit is that we get agreement before the summit," said Wallander. "This, ironically, is how it worked in the cold war as well."
Nevertheless, Wallander and her colleagues believe that the existing nuclear reduction deal need not mean that the summit itself will not yield additional gains.
"We have to close the loop of yesterday's issues and at the same time we need to be focused on today and tomorrow," said Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow in the CSIS Russia and Eurasia program.
Mendelson says the U.S. administration has turned a blind eye to Russia's failure to respect some of the international treaties it has signed but not fulfilled, as well as to Putin's crackdown on the press in his country.
She also cautioned against ignoring the Putin administration's military operations in Chechnya, and the continued crackdowns on militants in the region that are now handled under the guise of fighting terrorism. Such crackdowns on militant factions do little to stop terrorism and only serve to breed extremism, she said.
Robert Einhorn, senior advisor at the CSIS International Security Program focused on the importance of security issues regarding Iran and Iraq, two key states in the Bush administration's focus on international anti-terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation policy. He believes that the U.S. effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction requires close cooperation between Russia and America.
In recent years, Russia has made some progress in stopping some of its scientists from assisting Iran in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, but Einhorn says the cooperation is still ongoing and is "accelerating" the development of Iran's nuclear arsenal.
Although Secretary of State Colin S. Powell and others have reportedly raised this issue with their Russian counterparts, Einhorn says the topic was left off the table during the Bush-Putin summit last year.
"The Russians will not take this issue seriously unless President Bush addresses this issue in very, clear and forceful terms," said Einhorn. "It is critical that the President raise the issue critically and firmly with President Putin if this issue is to be resolved over the next several months."
In terms of Iraq, Einhorn sees promise in the fact that in recent months the Russians have moved to distance themselves from Saddam Hussein's regime.
He added that while it is critical that Russia supports efforts by the United Nations Security Council to reopen Iraq to rigorous weapons inspections and the new, tougher sanctions sought by the United States, he doubted these issues would be a focus of the discussions between Putin and Bush.
Zeyno Baran, director of the CSIS Caucasus Project, says the meetings could be crucial in helping the United States figure out how much sway Putin actually has over the Russian government hierarchy.
"When it comes to very sensitive issues ... it is unclear how much Putin controls the rest of his team and how much he is not in control," said Baran. "This is important in this summit."
Jeremy Azrael, director of the RAND Corp.'s Center for Russia and Eurasia said that the Bush administration has pretty consistently raised these issues -- security questions regarding Iran and Iraq, Putin's crackdown on Russian media, and Russian policy in Chechnya -- in the past with Russian officials. He noted that the degree to which they have been pursued is a matter of timing and judgment.
"The perception of a lot of Russians is that the (Bush) administration should not be spotlighting or highlighting these things because Russia has been so cooperative post Sept. 11," Azrael told United Press International. "The Administration nonetheless continued to raise these issues and therefore isn't providing the Russian government the sort of cover that some Russians believe the government deserves as a quid pro quo. I am not aware of any significant failure or any resounding silence on the part of the U.S. government in regard to those issues."
Azrael urged caution in response to the calls for some of these issues to be pushed more strongly, or for them to be given precedence over other policy matters.
"I don't know that I would want to raise those issues more stridently because I think that it might mix up our American priorities, and I don't think it would do a lot of good in changing Russian behaviors," Azrael said.
Ultimately, Wallander said that despite the initially rocky start in Russian-U.S. relations under the Bush administration, the track record of cooperation between Bush and Putin since their meeting last year -- and especially since September 11 -- has been good. She added, however, that it is impossible to tell if this will continue because of the wealth of economic, developmental and security issues that exist between the two nations.
"The question is -- can the political relations and therefore the cooperation in Central Asia transfer elsewhere," she said.
