Powell’s Agenda Not Music to Putin’s Ears

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell faced a barrage of questions during his visit to Russia this week, but few were more pointed than the one from a woman named Kristina who submitted an e-mail query during Powell’s interview with the radio station Echo of Moscow.

“Saddam Hussein’s obvious terror was stopped only through an intervention of other countries, mainly the USA. Now Moscow is destroying Chechnya with tacit approval from the international community,” she wrote. What, she wanted to know, was America going to do about it?

For a partial answer, Kristina might have opened the previous morning’s Izvestia newspaper, where in a front-page essay Powell not only raised the issue of Russia’s human rights record in the breakaway republic of Chechnya but also gently prodded the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin on media freedom, fair elections and the recent arrest of the nation’s richest businessman, Yukos Oil’s former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Powell also raised all four issues with Putin, signaling the Bush administration’s first move to exert pressure on the Kremlin to check what many see as a worrisome authoritarian trend that began with the election of Putin, a former KGB colonel, in 2000.

The tone was noncombative: Powell left it to Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov to broach the topics in the meeting with Putin. Afterward, Powell called his message quiet advice between “friends,” aimed -- in an otherwise congratulatory assessment of Russia -- at outlining issues that could impair future relations between the two nations.

But a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that the low-key approach should not be misunderstood, and suggested that trade issues, pro-Russia legislation in Congress and “funding for certain programs” could be jeopardized if Moscow veered from the path of democracy.

“If the Russians are interpreting this as a purely political exercise based on pro-forma considerations, they’re making a big mistake,” the envoy said.

Ivanov on Wednesday downplayed the significance Powell placed on the issues in his meetings and emphasized that Putin was able to respond substantively on each point.

But Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, said the Kremlin was shrugging off American criticism at its peril.

“Over the past few years, George Bush has traveled a huge distance between [the two leaders’ first meeting in 2001] when he ‘looked Putin in the eye’ and saw that Putin cared about his country very much, and today’s situation, when Putin received a message from Bush saying that Putin did not quite measure up to a true democrat,” he said. “The fact that Bush has traveled that distance speaks for itself.”

“One thing people better wake up to is what follows after Russia is proclaimed an undemocratic country,” Kremenyuk said. “There will be a new cold war. A police regime armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons is something that the Americans will never tolerate.”

Putin’s style of “managed democracy” has drawn increasing criticism amid the state takeover of private TV stations, the war in Chechnya -- in which civilians have been kidnapped and killed by Russian forces -- and December parliamentary elections in which both pro-business opposition parties were shut out and a pro-Kremlin party was widely believed to have had an unfair advantage.

An important focus of American concerns, the U.S. diplomat said, was the October arrest of Khodorkovsky, who had donated large sums to opposition parties. Powell’s message, said the envoy, was that the fraud and tax-evasion investigation into Khodorkovsky’s firm “should be transparent” and based on the law.

“We need to have the confidence that Russia is moving forward in building a stable democratic system, where the rule of law is stronger than it is today,” the diplomat said.

Ivanov, in a meeting with foreign journalists, said it would be “not true” to suggest that the issue dominated the talks. “Our president said, ‘I would like to express my point of view,’ and he expressed his point of view.”

On Khodorkovsky’s arrest, Ivanov said, Putin emphasized that there were no selective prosecutions taking place, and “that it should be clear to everybody that the rule of law will be observed.”

As for the election, Putin said all parties had access to the media, but the pro-business parties “failed to unite ... and propose an understandable program of politics,” Ivanov said.

On Chechnya, he said, Putin pointed out that a political settlement is underway that resulted in elections in the republic last year and an increase in stability.

By Wednesday, the interchanges were fodder for television satire. NTV’s popular program “Red Arrow” featured Ivanov and Powell as animal characters on a train.

“We are worried about your problems with democracy,” Powell’s character said.

“Come on, let’s steer clear of all these hints. We know perfectly well how you guys export it,” the Ivanov puppet laughed, apparently referring to Iraq. “And as a matter of fact, we like democracy so much, we are planning to erect a monument to it.”

“Well, this is what I meant,” Powell’s puppet said. “You have definitely got democracy, but all of it has been concentrated in the hands of one person. Absolute democracy, so to speak.”

“Well, who is to blame if the overwhelming majority of the people in this country do not support democracy?” Ivanov’s character asked. “Democracy means the rule of the people, and if the majority of the people don’t support the idea of the rule of the people, we need to observe the rule of the people.”