A Times Editorial

Summit sense

A meeting between Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin will probably not achieve much, but exchanging views on human rights and arms control is still worthwhile.

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 3, 2000

President Clinton will sit down for talks in Moscow this weekend with new Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright downplay hopes of any big breakthroughs. Despite the modest predictions for this meeting between a president on his way out and one only three weeks in office, it is important that the two leaders exchange views. If nothing else, Putin needs to hear American concerns about his early human rights record.

Putin, a former KGB operative, regards the Chechen war as none of the world's business. He also is engaged in a recentralization of Kremlin power that worries many democrats. He has tried to intimidate the media by sending police to television and newspaper offices. He has appointed seven presidential "representatives" and charged them with quelling Russia's rebellious regions and clamping down on dissent. Five of the seven are ex-KGB or military figures. The state security force, the FSB, has been reorganized along KGB lines and given broader powers. Compulsory military training for schoolchildren has been reinstated. Putin has even begun to rehabilitate Stalin as a national hero, issuing a commemorative coin and ordering new images of Stalin to be placed at military memorials.

Yet Putin seems to be a progressive in economic matters, stressing the importance of free trade and investment. And he has moved farther faster on arms reduction than any U.S. administration. Putin has pledged that Russia will, albeit slowly, begin decommissioning arms and press ahead with START III.

The United States can lecture Putin on human rights, but we can expect a lecture in return on nuclear policy. Washington is still struggling over ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And Putin already has given notice that he will not be swayed by President Clinton's arguments on behalf of a U.S. missile defense system that would abrogate the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. Congressional Republicans, along with GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, support a far more sweeping missile defense system than the Clinton administration proposes. No one in Washington seems properly concerned by warnings from Russia and China (as well as from most of our European allies) that such a system could heighten tensions and ignite a new arms race.

President Clinton has to convince Putin that the United States is serious about arms control and that a ground-based missile defense system will not destabilize the existing nuclear balance. That may prove impossible. He has to raise the touchy matter of Russian atrocities in Chechnya without appearing to interfere in Russian internal affairs. That may prove to be impossible, too. He has an obligation to express American distaste for Putin's repression of civil liberties, even at the risk of angering his hosts. So it is probably true that little will come of this U.S.-Russia summit. Nonetheless, lines of communication will be reinforced, and America will know a bit more about Vladimir Putin.

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