Los Angeles: In a rare diplomatic rebuke, President Barack Obama on Wednesday canceled his Moscow summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The decision reflected both US anger over Russia's harboring of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and growing frustration within the Obama administration over what it sees as Moscow's stubbornness on other key issues, including missile defense and human rights. The move is also retribution for Russia's decision to grant temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, who is accused of leaking highly secretive details about National Security Agency surveillance programs.
By calling off Obama’s visit to Moscow, the US has shown it is not ready to build relations on an equal footing, the Kremlin said. The Snowden situation, on which the decision was based, is not Russia’s fault, presidential aide Yury Ushakov stressed. “We are disappointed by the US administration’s decision to cancel the visit of President Obama to Moscow that was planned for the beginning of September. It is clear that the decision is related to the situation around the former intelligence agency employee Snowden – something that was created not by us,” Ushakov told reporters on Wednesday.
According to Ushakov, the US has “for many years dodged entering into an extradition treaty” with Russia and “invariably refused” its extradition requests citing the absence of such a treaty. “All this situation shows that the US is still not ready to build relations with Russia on equal footing,” Putin’s aide added. Despite that, Obama’s invitation to visit Moscow remains in effect, and Russia is “ready to continue working with our American partners on all the key issues of the bilateral and multilateral agenda,” Ushakov said.
Meanwhile, a top White House official says Obama still attends to plan the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, 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 Moscow.
"There have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality,'' Obama said in an interview. The US was expected to alert the Russians on Wednesday morning about Obama's decision, though the two presidents were not expected to speak directly. Obama and Putin last met in June on the sidelines of the Group of 8 summit in Northern Ireland.
Instead of visiting Putin in Moscow, the president will add a stop in Sweden to his early September travel itinerary. White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Russia's decision last week to defy the U.S. only worsened an already troubled relationship. And with few signs that progress would be made during the Moscow summit on other agenda items, Rhodes said the president decided to cancel the talks.
"We'll still work with Russia on issues where we can find common ground, but it was the unanimous view of the president and his national security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment," Rhodes said. Obama's decision is likely to deepen the chill in the already frosty relationship between the two leaders. They have frequently found themselves at odds on pressing international issues, most recently in Syria, where the US accuses Putin of helping President Bashar Assad fund a civil war. The US has also been a vocal critic of Russia's crackdown on Kremlin critics and recently sanctioned 18 Russians for human rights violations.
