Obama sends message to Putin

Kremlin praises note as ‘constructive’

MOSCOW, Russia, April 15, (AFP): President Barack Obama’s national security advisor on Monday handed a “constructive” message from the US leader to Russian President Vladimir Putin, days after the former foes exchanged Cold War-style blacklists in a row over human rights.

The Kremlin praised the note, personally handed over in Moscow by White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to Putin, as containing new ideas and said it included proposals about nuclear arsenals.

Donilon, the highest-ranking American to visit Russia since Obama’s inauguration for a second term in January, walked into a vicious diplomatic storm in Moscow that whipped up over the weekend.

The United States on Friday published a list of 18 Russians it was blacklisting over human rights abuses. Russia a day later angrily responded with a similar list of its own in a titfor-tat move.

Joined

But Putin joined Donilon’s talks with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev at the Kremlin, a move that the Kremlin had kept under wraps until the last moment in a apparent bid to remind Washington of its displeasure. The Kremlin confirmed Donilon handed over Obama’s message, which Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said contained proposals on nuclear weapons arsenals, missile defence and improving bilateral trade.

“The message is written in a very constructive tone,” he said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

“Some ideas have already been talked about but there are some new elements which our country will study in the most attentive way and give a corresponding response,” he added, without specifying further on the contents of the message.

Ushakov said the events of the past days showed that while the Obama administration “wants to actively develop relations in many areas”, the United States “still has some Russophobes who want to throw a spanner in the works.”

Donilon held a morning meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who said that the American side had emphasised they did not want the “irritations” to spoil the strategic nature of US-Russia relations.

The US lists 16 Russians allegedly linked to the death of jailed lawyer Sergei Magntisky in 2009 as well as two Chechens who stand accused of murder. They are barred from travelling to the US or holding assets there.

Russia slammed the move as unfriendly and a day later hit back with its own blacklist of 18 Americans, including several wellknown figures linked to detention practices at the Guantanamo Bay prison.