Putin Lectures Ambassadors on Pro-Western Policy

The Moscow Times ^ | July 15, 2002 | Andrei Zolotov Jr.

[Shermy]

Having summoned all of his ambassadors to Moscow, President Vladimir Putin on Friday explained his new pro-Western foreign policy and laid out his vision for a more modern and economically savvy diplomatic corps.

Formally dedicated to the Foreign Ministry's 200th anniversary -- in 1802, Tsar Alexander I for the first time called the foreign service a "ministry" -- the meeting of more than 130 ambassadors at the ministry was more than just an office party.

The only previous time a similar meeting was called was in 1986, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign minister and the policy of bringing the Cold War to an end was inaugurated. The last Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, said in an interview Friday that the 1986 meeting brought a "turning point" in Soviet foreign policy.

Putin re-oriented Russia's foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, and the new pro-Western stance has been a hard sell to the country's military and diplomatic establishment.

He told the ambassadors Friday that the new, closer relationship between Russia and the United States was the result of a "new reading of both countries' interests and a similar perception of the very character of modern global threats."

This does not mean that diplomats should not defend Russian interests more vigorously, particularly in business, where diplomats could learn from their foreign colleagues, he said.

"You should not be ashamed [of lobbying the country's economic interests]," NTV television showed Putin saying in his 25-minute speech, in a departure from the prepared text. "You know how your colleagues behave in this regard in many countries including Russia: very persistent, to choose my words carefully, sometimes even trespassing on the limits of diplomacy."

To help promote Russia's economic interests abroad, a plan is being developed to transfer Russia's trade representative offices, currently branches of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, to the Foreign Ministry and turn them into economic sections of the embassies, Putin said.

The ministry's anniversary has served as a news peg for a wide promotion of the country's foreign policy. Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov appeared on ORT's "Vremena" current affairs talk show, and last week a lengthy interview with him appeared in the Izvestia newspaper.

Continuing the PR campaign, Putin urged diplomats to improve their public relations. He said the Foreign Ministry was too closed to the media and said many important things diplomats do either go unnoticed or are criticized. "We need to explain our foreign policy moves in a competent, comprehensible and talented manner," he said.

Helping Russians in distress or businessmen abroad also was declared a priority. "Many missions treat it as a peripheral issue," Putin said, castigating diplomats for "bureaucratic indifference" to the needs of their citizens. From now on, embassies would be judged by how well they helped Russians abroad, he said.

Putin said Russia's diplomatic corps needs new faces and, causing many smiles in the audience, more women. "It is especially noticeable in this audience that women get undeservedly little attention in the diplomatic service," Putin said. "The absence of the so-called weaker sex in our diplomacy may prove to be a weak spot in our foreign policy," he said.

Putin also highlighted the most important policy issues, including cooperation with CIS countries, integration into the decision-making process of the global economy and relations with the European Union.

Alexander Pikayev, political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said Friday that Putin's meeting with the ambassadors was not ceremonial but marked an important turn in foreign policy -- if not in exactly the same revolutionary way as in 1986.

"Putin's turn in foreign policy is not welcomed by everybody," Pikayev said. "The time had come for the president to meet with ambassadors so that they better understand his foreign policy."

To widen their knowledge of their country and its needs, the ambassadors are now supposed to travel around Russia and meet with local government leaders and businessmen.

Pankin, who was the Soviet ambassador to Sweden in 1986, recalled the high expectations before the first ambassadors' meeting that year. Up until then, he said, when groups of ambassadors were summoned to Moscow for a conference, the meetings were overregulated and ambassadors were not allowed to speak their minds freely. But with the advent of glasnost, the ambassadors expected this meeting would be different.

But Pankin and his colleagues were disappointed when the country's leaders arrived flanked by bodyguards and were inaccessible. "Shevardnadze opened the meeting and, just as he had sung odes to [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev before, began to speak about the great historical importance of the meeting with the general secretary," Pankin said by telephone from Stockholm, where he lives. "Gorbachev had to interrupt and say it was an exaggeration. Shevardnadze blushed but said he had to finish the speech that had been written for him."

Pankin said that while Gorbachev initiated a real change in foreign policy, Putin's sole goal was to vindicate his Chechnya policy.

"Whether it is a turn or not a turn, one should think about the protection of our interests," Pankin said. "NATO or EU expansion are no longer theoretical issues -- the visa barriers are hitting average Russians, hitting small and mid-size businesses."

Pankin welcomed -- with a laugh -- Putin's proposal to transfer the trade offices to the diplomatic service. "That is what I already did once," Pankin said, referring to his brief term as foreign minister from August to December 1991. He said he drafted the decree, and it was initialed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and signed by Gorbachev.

But the Soviet Union fell apart and Russian Foreign Economic Relations Minister Sergei Glazyev, who is currently a prominent Communist deputy in the State Duma, restored the old order, Pankin said.

[Shermy]

Russia ping list. If you want on or off, mail me.

[thinktwice]

embassies would be judged by how well they helped Russians abroad,

Meanwhile, female American citizens in Saudi Arabia can go to hell insofar as the U.S. Government is concerned.

You can read about it on the editorial pages of last week's Wall Street Journal. Adult American citizens forced to stay against their will -- by the local U.S. Embassy in league with the women's Saudi fathers or husbands.

[Dog Gone]

It's a good thing Putin is our friend, because he's pretty sharp.

[AdvisorB]

This is further proof of a deepening Russia-United States
rapproachment. NATO was the end result of an attempt
as Churchill once said: "to keep Russia out and the United
States in." I believe the two countries realize that the
EU's gameplan is to keep both Russia and the USA out.
The EU, islamofascism, and the fear of a growing military
threat from China, are driving the erstwhile adversaries
together. I think this process will excellerate, and thus
Russian and American relations will continue to improve
and grow stronger.

[hinckley buzzard]

Putin appears to have it settled that Russia's self-interests are best served by joining with the US on matters of mutual benefit.

I see it more a pro-US tilt than a general Westward bias, however.
I am guessing he has about the same regard for the EU as the average freeper.

That's not to say that he won't be glad to sell them oil and gas, of course. He will. The Russian economy has quietly been making great strides lately but needs trade with the West to fuel accelerating growth.

GW has achieved a crucial victory in forging this relationship personally with Putin, and also between the two nations-- especially after the way the Clintonoid scum humiliated and trashed Russia in the Balkins, when they were weak.

They are not so weak now, and in ten years we will be damn glad they are not our enemies, and don't have an old score to settle.

[Kermit]

"The only previous time a similar meeting was called was in 1986, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign minister and the policy of bringing the Cold War to an end was inaugurated."

BS!!