‘Excellent’ Talks Belie Chill in U.S.-Russia Relationship

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov met here Saturday to try to close the growing chasm between the two former Cold War superpowers on issues ranging from the controversial U.S. national missile defense scheme to sanctions on Iraq.

Powell described the first encounter between the Bush administration and the year-old government of President Vladimir V. Putin--held less than a week after the FBI uncovered a senior U.S. counterintelligence official allegedly spying for Russia--as “very, very excellent.”

During the 90-minute session, Ivanov said, the two opened a “constructive dialogue” on the principal U.S.-Russian concerns as well as on “urgent international matters.”

But the congeniality displayed by Powell and Ivanov, who met alone and agreed to call each other by their first names, masked the increasingly problematic relations between Washington and Moscow. Ivanov jokingly conceded that any notion that the two countries will be able to resolve their differences soon “exceeds our expectations.”

No issue illustrates the attitude of the new U.S. administration and Russia’s growing suspicion of U.S. intentions better than national missile defense. The two governments have been sparring for months over the proposed $60-billion plan to build a shield to protect the United States from a missile attack.

In Cairo, the two foreign policy chiefs agreed to reconvene working groups of specialists, set up under the Clinton administration, to discuss both offensive weapons and defensive systems. But this incremental step forward was overshadowed by huge differences in substance.

In the past week, Moscow has tried to offer an alternative plan that might, at minimum, make Russia a party to a missile defense system rather than exclude it altogether.

En route to Cairo, however, Powell described the plan, presented by Putin to NATO Secretary-General George Robertson last week, as “interesting” but noted that it would involve “a different kind of system.”

“There isn’t a lot there yet that we can get our teeth into,” he told reporters aboard his plane.

Rather than welcome Russia’s effort to find some compromise by offering an alternative for a nonstrategic missile defense for Europe, the Bush administration heralded the proposal largely because it implied Moscow’s acceptance that the threat of missile strikes by “rogue” nations does exist.

“Their words indicate that they recognize that there are new threats in the post-Cold War era, threats that require a theater-based antiballistic missile system,” President Bush said Thursday at his first news conference.

Russia experts warn about the long-term impact of the deep differences between Moscow and Washington.

“They’re exhausted with us--and we with them. In Washington, the attitude now is ‘Let’s do NMD [national missile defense], and if the Russians go along, fine. If not, do we really care?’ ” said Michael McFaul of Stanford University and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “But the Russian plan doesn’t necessarily mean they’re prepared to acquiesce. Far from it.”

Underlying the two countries’ differences on specifics is a more fundamental recent shift in attitude. In Washington, the issue debated during the Clinton administration was “Who lost Russia?” Under the Bush administration, experts contend, the attitude seems to be “Who needs Russia?”

Outlining the Bush administration’s proposed foreign policy at his Senate confirmation hearing last month, Powell called Russia “a great country” but went on to discuss how much it needs to change, and he rejected out-of-hand the Kremlin’s concerns about the new administration’s intentions.

To reap the “enormous benefits” of relations with the United States, Moscow needs to get on with reform, particularly establishing the rule of law, rooting out corruption, stopping the proliferation of missile and nuclear technologies, and “in general living up to the obligations that it has incurred,” Powell said.

He also suggested that Moscow should not count on the West to solve its problems.

The initial policy statements mark a major shift from the Clinton administration’s description of Russia as a strategic partner and its funneling of aid to help entrench the country’s fragile young democracy.

“The dynamic in relations during the 1990s was getting Russia to go along with things it didn’t want to, such as the first [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] expansion. The United States offered what amounted to bribes in the form of incentives--aid or [International Monetary Fund] credits or turning the G-7 [group of industrialized nations] into the G-8 to include Russia. The difference now is that there’s not a lot on the table to bring them along,” McFaul said.

The new attitude has been bitterly noted in Moscow.

“A lot of people in Russia, especially among the top brass and in state security bodies, feel angry and embittered over the fact that people in the new U.S. administration act and talk as if they have already discarded Russia,” said Dmitri V. Trenin, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

In response, Putin has pledged that he will not make the kind of concessions offered by former President Boris N. Yeltsin during the Clinton administration.

In the future, Moscow would stand firm about its national interests, he said in a foreign policy speech.

Putin also has deliberately snubbed the United States on a series of foreign trips designed to re-energize Russian foreign policy, while cultivating powers that Powell has called rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran.

The gap between the two former ideological rivals now exists with regard to several other issues that were on the table in Cairo, including two of particular concern to the Bush administration.

On Iraq, Russia has pressed harder than any nation to ease or lift sanctions on Baghdad and has sent regular missions to the Mideast nation in a campaign of support to end the 10-year international squeeze on President Saddam Hussein.

This policy division has acquired a new twist in Moscow since Bush’s inauguration. The new U.S. policy, local media and deputies in parliament have been saying, is aimed at avenging the failure of President Bush’s father to topple Hussein during Operation Desert Storm.

The U.S. and British airstrikes near Baghdad earlier this month deepened the divide.

“The use of force against Iraq is continuing despite opposition to such action, which contradicts the U.N. Charter and international law,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

In Cairo, Ivanov made clear that Russia wants to re-integrate Baghdad into the international community. In contrast, Powell told a news conference after the meeting that “we all have a solemn obligation to keep Saddam Hussein in check.”

On NATO expansion, the Bush administration has also given short shrift to Russian opposition.

“If we believe the enlargement of NATO should continue--and we do believe that--we should not fear that Russia will object,” Powell said at his confirmation hearing.

“We will do it because it is in our interest and because freedom-loving people wish to be part of NATO.”

Russian Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev threatened Monday that Moscow will take extra security measures if there is further NATO expansion. And Putin said recently that “we speak openly of rejecting it in dialogue with the alliance.”

But Washington feels that it no longer must meet Russia halfway on many security issues. While the U.S. defense budget is roughly $300 billion, Russia can now afford less than $7 billion, according to McFaul.

Ironically, the one issue not on Powell and Ivanov’s agenda was the arrest of alleged spy Robert Philip Hanssen, who is charged with having passed information to Moscow for 15 years in one of the most damaging cases of espionage in U.S. history. En route to Cairo, Powell said the case is being handled through “other channels.”

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Wright reported from Cairo and Dixon from Moscow. Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.