US * RUSSIA Alliance- A Good Thing!

Clinton Visits Moscow Monday For U.S.- Russia Partnership Talks

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will begin a three-day visit to Russia Monday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry described it as an important step in moving the Russia-U.S. partnership forward after a summit in July of the presidents of the two countries in Moscow built a strong base.

Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, as coordinators of the Russian-American presidential commission, will discuss “aspects of its structure and effectiveness” and to “outline the schedule for bilateral contacts,” according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko.

A key item on the agenda is another round of talks by the two sides on replacing the cold war-era Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I).

United States and Russia have held seven rounds of negotiations so far, aimed at signing a follow-up treaty on nuclear arms limitation.

START I, expiring at the year-end, places a limit of 6,000 strategic or long-range nuclear warheads on each side. The Moscow understanding calls for reducing nuclear warheads held by each country to between 1,500 and 1,675 by the end of 2012.

Dropping of Washington’s European missile defense plan was a major condition by Moscow to consider major cuts to its nuclear arsenal.

The top diplomats will also discuss Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear program, and the Middle East peace process.

Clinton’s visit will be preceded by consultations between Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. under secretary of state Ellen Tauscher on missile defense.

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Clinton to raise her profile with speech next week

Although the speech will address many foreign-policy issues, it is also meant to raise Clinton’s profile and prove that she is loyal to President Obama, her rival during last year’s Democratic primary. Clinton has a tricky balancing act: She must be loyal to Obama’s vision while also making the secretary-of-state job her own and giving it her own personal touch.

from Rozen’s article:

•** Hillary’s hard cast has been removed, and she’s in physical therapy six days a week for the next six to eight weeks. (It really must have been quite a fall. I’m assuming she is fortunate enough to have health insurance that covers all those sessions.)

•** White House aides have nixed plans to hire Sidney Blumenthal — a longtime advisor to Bill Clinton — as a State Department consultant and speechwriter. Secretary Clinton had sought to hire him to raise her profile.

Clinton, Nursing Injured Elbow, Hails Foreign Policy Progress at Six-Month Mark

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently has been absent on the world stage due in large part to her broken elbow. But she says the administration is making strides in foreign policy…

The broken elbow that has kept Secretary of State Hillary Clinton off the world stage for several weeks did not prevent her from addressing her department employees and interns Friday, as she began to mark her first six months on the job.

Clinton has not been accompanying the president on trips out of the country nearly as much as her predecessors did. When President Obama returns this weekend from his current trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana, he will have visited a total of nine countries without his secretary of state in their less than six months in office.

But aides dismiss suggestions that Obama and Clinton are growing apart. Indeed, on Friday Clinton hailed the foreign policy progress she and the president have made, saying the administration is patching up “strained alliances” and striving to influence “adversaries” to change their behavior. Making sure to throw in a couple cracks about her injury, Clinton forecast tough challenges ahead but said the administration is making strides.

“We’ve been on this job for almost half a year. We’ve been working hard and some of us have the scars to prove it,” Clinton, her arm still in a sling, said to laughter. “I have not been throwing sharp elbows,” she joked. “We are seeing encouraging results from all of our efforts, including my physical therapy.”

The secretary of state plans to make what is being called a major policy speech next week at the Council on Foreign Relations to mark, more officially, her first six months in office. She seemed to give a preview Friday, crediting the administration with making strides toward restoring ties with countries around the world.

“We are repairing strained alliances. We’re cultivating new partnerships. We’re working to engage and change the behavior of adversaries. And we are prioritizing development along with diplomacy as part of our global agenda,” she said.

The administration is grappling with a host of international challenges, not all of which look any closer to being resolved. Speaking from Italy, Obama on Friday continued to condemn the Iranian crackdown on pro-reform demonstrators in the wake of the country’s disputed elections. The breakdown in the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election has imperiled U.S. hopes of restoring ties with the Islamic regime. North Korea also continues to defy international warnings by conducting repeated missile tests.

And the administration was recently caught in a difficult spot, having to stick up for leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya after he was ousted from office.

But Obama seemed to make some progress toward resetting relations with Russia during his talks this week with President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow.

Clinton did not go on that trip, but officials said she would have, if not for her broken elbow. It’s unclear whether Clinton will accompany the globe-trotting Obama more in the latter half of the year. Clinton has met up with Obama in Europe, Trinidad and Tobago and Egypt this year, but the president has gone without her to a slew of countries.

Like her predecessors, Clinton has kept a vigorous international schedule of her own. She’s visited Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Central America, as well as Canada and Mexico, on her own time. Clinton plans to head to India on a separate trip next week, after her policy address.

Clinton said Friday that the Obama administration is facing very high expectations on the world stage. “It may not be fair, but that’s kind of the way it is,” she said, noting that foreign leaders have made “very aggressive demands on our country.”

Clinton took a shot at former President George W. Bush, saying at least one foreign leader told her that the reason they didn’t make such demands over the last eight years was because, “We knew we would never get a response.” Clinton added: “We don’t have the luxury of being bystanders.” Clinton said that the department has had to work “overtime” to deal with what she called an “unprecedented set of challenges” on the world stage. “We don’t have the luxury of deciding which issues to deal with,” she said. “We need to work better, work smarter and work together with more partners in and beyond our government.”

Clinton also announced she would be instituting a new review process within the State Department to assess the agency’s needs and progress every four years.
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Clinton vows to bring Russia back in from the Nato cold…

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton talks after a Nato foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton talks after a Nato foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters

The Obama administration moved today to resume high-level relations with Moscow when Hillary Clinton led a western push to revive contacts between Russia and Nato.

Making her European debut as secretary of state, Clinton told a meeting of Nato foreign ministers that Washington wanted “a fresh start” in relations with Moscow. She will have her first official negotiations with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva tomorrow.

“I don’t think you punish Russia by stopping conversation with them,” she said, adding that there could be benefits to the better relationship. “We not only can but must co-operate with Russia.”

But she added: “We pursue it with our eyes wide open.”

The meeting in Brussels agreed to reinstate the work of the Nato-Russia council, a consultative body that was frozen last year in protest at Moscow’s invasion and partition of Georgia.

The allies agreed that Russian and Nato defence and foreign ministers should resume meetings as soon as possible after Nato’s 60th birthday summit in France and Germany next month.

Diplomats said the accord and the talks in Geneva tomorrow could pave the way for the Obama administration to press ahead with a common agenda with Russia which would entail talks on nuclear arms control and on Russian co-operation with US policy on Afghanistan and Iran.
The new White House team are clearly hoping to bypass the prime minister and former president, Vladimir Putin, and focus its diplomacy on President Dmitry Medvedev.

For any big shifts in the Russian-American relationship, Moscow would insist on the shelving of the Pentagon’s missile shield project in Poland and the Czech Republic and a freeze in the prospects for Ukraine and Georgia joining Nato.

The US and Germany tabled a joint proposal for yesterday’s Nato meeting, leaving the contentious issue of Ukraine’s and Georgia’s membership chances open and urging greater co-operation with Russia “as equal partners in areas of common interest”. It went on: “These include: Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, counter-piracy, counter-narcotics, non-proliferation, arms control and other issues.”

Despite the resumption of dialogue with Moscow, ministers stressed that western leaders would use the Nato-Russia vehicle to speak frankly.

“We want to engage with Russia, to state very clearly the areas where there are common interests and those areas of disagreement,” said the foreign secretary, David Miliband, whose speeches last year following the Georgia war were highly critical of Moscow.

“Russia is a global player. Not talking to them is not an option,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general.

In the first big foreign policy speech from the Obama administration, in Munich last month, the vice-president, Joe Biden, said the White House wanted to “press the reset button” in relations with Moscow after years of dangerous drift.

Yesterday’s agreement represented a first step in the policy shift. The talks in Geneva will then prepare the ground for the first meeting between Obama and Medvedev in London at the beginning of next month.

The agreement today was held up for several hours by Lithuania, which strongly opposed the resumption of dialogue with the Kremlin.

France and Germany, keen to develop close links with Moscow, threatened in turn to cancel scheduled meetings last night between Nato and Ukraine and Georgia if “the opening with Russia” was not given a green light, diplomats said.

“We had a vigorous discussion on Russia,” said Clinton. “I thought it was absolutely invigorating.”

Clinton Assures Europe of Ties Before Mending inks With Russia

Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, left center, shares a word with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, second right, during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday March 5, 2009. Relations with Russia and Afghanistan will be the key items on the agenda. (AP Photo/Francois Lenoir, Pool) (Francois Lenoir - AP)

March 6 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to reassure Europeans that U.S. overtures to Russia won’t weaken trans-Atlantic links, as she spoke in Brussels before heading to a meeting with her Russian counterpart.

“Our engagement with Russia in no way undermines our support for countries like Georgia or the Baltics or the Balkans or anywhere else in Europe,” Clinton told aspiring leaders in a town hall-style forum at the European Parliament today that was also Web cast to 31 countries. Those nations have a right “to be independent, free, make their own decisions and chart their own course without undue interference from Russia.”

The exchange was part of Clinton’s drive to connect U.S. diplomacy with the next generation and improve America’s image abroad during her first round of foreign visits. She’ll meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later today in Geneva, where she plans to pursue the Obama administration’s determination to solidify partnerships on key issues, even with occasional adversaries.

On this week’s swing through the Middle East and Europe, Clinton, 61, has met with young people or women’s groups at almost every stop.