U.S.-Russia Relations Chilly Amid Transition

Shopkeeper Vladimir Tyshko prepares a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, for sale in Moscow. (By Mikhail Metzel -- Associated Press)

"If you're Dmitry Medvedev, what kind of relationship with George Bush would you think is worth establishing?" asked Stephen Sestanovich, a U.S. ambassador to ex-Soviet states under Clinton. "It isn't just that he's looking ahead to the next presidency. It's that the relationship has so completely lost lift and content that you need new ways of validating it."

All three of the major remaining presidential candidates in the United States have talked tough on Russia and criticized Bush for treating Putin too softly as he consolidated power and squelched opposition at home. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has called for throwing Russia out of the G-8, although Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have not gone that far.

The nuclear agreement offers a case study in the frustrations of those trying to find that lift and content that Sestanovich said is missing. Bush announced during a visit to St. Petersburg in July 2005 that he had decided to permit extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time, reversing decades of bipartisan foreign policy. The two sides then entered into negotiations for the formal pact required by U.S. law known as a "123 agreement."

Such an agreement would clear the way for Russia to import and store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world, a lucrative business for Moscow. The White House hoped to use the agreement as an incentive to win more Russian cooperation on Iran and to help Bush's plan to spread civilian nuclear energy to power-hungry countries that could send the used radioactive material to Russia.

It took a year to draft the agreement. Senior U.S. and Russian officials initialed it just before Putin's visit last July to Kennebunkport, hailing it as a sign that the two sides could still cooperate despite tensions. But finalizing it has become an ordeal because it requires a formal U.S. assessment of Russia's nuclear ties to Iran. Critics believe it would be foolhardy to open nuclear cooperation with Moscow, given its history of assistance to Iran's civilian program.

U.S. officials thought they had worked out the remaining details, and Sergei Kiriyenko, a former Russian prime minister overseeing the issue, traveled to Washington last month. But under pressure from skeptics in Congress, the administration declared even before Kiriyenko arrived that the agreement was not ready. Instead, Kiriyenko signed a less significant deal on uranium.

"By treating the 123 agreement as some kind of undeserved 'gift' to a naughty Russia, Congress is stymieing cooperation with Russia on nuclear energy that is fully in the U.S. interest," said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Energy Department official who now heads the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank. "I recognize, though, that the dynamics are bad right now. . . . But we're running out of time before the end of the administration."

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the White House still hopes to complete the agreement but needs more information from Moscow. "We definitely want to get this done sooner rather than later," the official said. "A lot will depend on what we get back from them."