President Obama is even less likely to go through with a visit to Moscow this fall after Russia's decision on Thursday to grant Edward J Snowden temporary asylum. For Obama, though, the Snowden affair is only one of myriad reasons to beg off the scheduled meeting with President Vladimir V Putin.
The dispute over Snowden, the fugitive intelligence contractor, is less a singular sore point between the United States and Russia than a symptom of a relationship that has soured across the board. Even without it, administration officials and analysts said, it was not clear what Obama and Putin would talk about - let alone agree on.

From the Syrian civil war and Iran's new president to missile defence and nuclear arms reductions, the United States and Russia are miles apart on virtually every major issue they discuss.

The White House, which began debating last month whether to cancel the September trip, said Obama still had not made a final decision. "Obviously this is not a positive development," said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney. "We are evaluating the utility of a summit."

"There is no question that there are a range of issues, setting aside the disposition of Snowden, on which we are currently in disagreement with Russia," he added.

The decline in the American-Russian relationship has been remarkably swift since Putin's return to the presidency last year. Lately, it has taken on a tit-for-tat quality reminiscent of the Cold War: Russia barred Americans from adopting Russian babies; the United States blacklisted 18 Russians accused of human-rights violations.

The Russian government gave the White House no advance notice of its decision on Snowden, Carney said, making it clear that weeks of public and private diplomacy had gone nowhere.

For a White House keen to extract concrete results from a face-to-face meeting with Putin, the differences on geopolitical and security issues are an equally compelling reason to scrap the meeting.

By The Indian Express

 

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