| William Burns kicks off Middle East tour from Russia US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns is in Moscow on an official visit. Today he will hold talks with his Russian colleagues - Deputy Foreign Ministers Yuri Fedotov and Alexander Saltanov. On the eve of the meeting, the parties spoke differently about its goals. The press service of the US Embassy in Moscow quoted State Department spokesman Philip Reeker as saying to the Vremya Novostey newspaper that the main issue on the agenda was coordinating efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. And only then will the issues of rebuilding Iraq and measures to support the country’s recently created Ruling Council under the supervision of the Americans be discussed.
According to Russian Deputy Minister Yuri Fedotov, it is the post-war settlement in Iraq that “will become the main topic of Russian-American consultations.” Moscow says that “possible elements of a new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, including those reflecting the UN’s role in the reconstruction of this country,” will be discussed.
Such a discrepancy in the interpretation of the topics of negotiations between senior officials of the foreign policy departments of Russia and the United States is indicative. This reflects America's reluctance to publicly acknowledge that things are far from smooth sailing in Iraq. And visits like William Burns’s visit to Moscow are intended to test out options for carefully attracting to Iraq even those countries that consider a new Security Council resolution to be a condition for sending their peacekeepers there.
This task is not easy. It is also not easy for the Americans to maintain coordination between the peacekeepers of the countries already present in Iraq. Thus, yesterday there were reports from Iraq that the Dutch contingent in the south of the country does not want to come under the command of Polish forces. The 1,100 Dutch peacekeepers prefer to remain under British command.
Moscow does not cover up its desire to return the Iraqi crisis to the UN fold with a mantle of diplomatic curtseys. According to Yuri Fedotov, Russia sees emerging opportunities “for increasing UN participation in the reconstruction process in Iraq” and in this sense considers the visit of William Burns “in the context of additional contacts between members of the Security Council.”
From the Russian capital, Bill Burns (that is the name in the State Department of this career diplomat, who previously worked in Moscow and was ambassador to Jordan until 2001) heads to Baghdad. There, together with the American governor Paul Bremer and members of the Ruling Council, he will discuss issues of reconstruction of Iraq. Then he will fly to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem. There he will also face difficult negotiations - the day before the League of Arab States announced that it would recognize only the “democratically elected national government of Iraq.” The Arab states are not yet planning to send their troops to Iraq, as Washington insists. Andrey ZLOBIN |
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