[But Mr. Medvedev also criticized the political response in the United States, saying
that the attitude of some American presidential candidates toward Russia —
especially Mr. Romney’s characterization of Russia as an enemy of the United
States — “smells of Hollywood.” Mr. Romney told CNN on Monday that Russia was
the “number one geopolitical foe” of the United States. ]
By Mark Landler
 |
President Obama covered a microphone
as he arrived
at the plenary session
of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul on
Tuesday. |
SEOUL,
South Korea — Politics, diplomats like to say, stops at
the water’s edge. But this week, the politics of the presidential election
crashed into a nuclear security summit half a world away.
On Tuesday, President Obama declared that the United States
and Russia
could not realistically work out their dispute over an American missile defense
system this year because politics during the presidential campaign would make
it impossible to win support for any compromise.
“The only way I get this stuff done is if I’m
consulting with the Pentagon, if I’m consulting with Congress, if I’ve got
bipartisan support,” Mr. Obama said to reporters here. “Frankly, the current
environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations.”
The tempest began on Monday, when Mr. Obama was caught by a microphone in a moment of candor,
telling President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia that he would have
more flexibility to deal with the thorny issue of missile defense after the
election in November.
“I understand,” Mr. Medvedev replied. “I will
transmit this information to Vladimir,” he continued, referring to Vladimir V.
Putin, who won another term as president in an election this
month.
Republicans, not surprisingly, pounced. The
party’s presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, said such frank talk with a foreign
leader was an “alarming and troubling development.” House Speaker John A.
Boehner said he would be curious to hear what Mr. Obama meant by “flexibility.”
On Tuesday, the president was with Mr. Medvedev
again, this time to talk about a joint operation to clean up a nuclear-testing
site in Kazakhstan. Asked to clarify what he meant during his not-so-private
exchange the day before, he was primed to turn the tables.
“First of all, are the mikes on?” Mr. Obama
said, gesturing to a forest of boom mikes.
Then the president plunged into a tutorial on
the complexities of negotiating arms control treaties. In this case, Russia
objects to a missile defense system in Europe because it says it could be used
against its intercontinental ballistic missiles. It has demanded written
assurances that this would not be the case; the United States has refused to
accept such restrictions.
In what sounded like the argument he has made
against Republicans since the debt-ceiling debacle of last summer, Mr. Obama
said the highly partisan environment in Washington would make it difficult to
bridge gaps with Russia on such sensitive issues.
“You can’t start that a few months before
presidential and Congressional elections in the United States, and at a time
when they just completed elections in Russia, and they’re in the process of a
presidential transition,” Mr. Obama said, as Mr. Medvedev listened.
Lest anyone question his larger motives, Mr.
Obama linked the dispute over missile defense to his goal of radically reducing
the size of the American nuclear arsenal. To do that, he said, the United
States needed to build trust with Russia by dealing with missile defense.
“This is not a matter of hiding the ball,” he
said. “I want to see us gradually, systematically reduce reliance on nuclear
weapons.”
When Mr. Obama finished, and an interpreter
began translating his remarks into Russian, the president waved his hand, as if
to suggest they were not intended for non-American consumption.
But Mr. Medvedev also criticized the political
response in the United States, saying that the attitude of some American
presidential candidates toward Russia — especially Mr. Romney’s
characterization of Russia as an enemy of the United States — “smells of
Hollywood.” Mr. Romney told CNN on Monday that Russia was the “number one
geopolitical foe” of the United States.
“Look at your watch,” Mr. Medvedev told
reporters on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Seoul. “It is 2012
not the mid 1970s. No matter what party someone belongs to, he should pay
attention to political realities.”
White House officials said Mr. Obama was merely
stating the obvious. But that did not stop them from issuing a hasty statement
of clarification on Monday evening, after ABC News reported on Mr. Obama’s
overheard exchange, or prepping the president and reporters for his more
detailed explanation the next day.
For his part, the president chalked it up to
the realities of an election year. “I think the stories you guys have been
writing over the last 24 hours is pretty good evidence of that,” he said.
In all, the episode somewhat overshadowed the nuclear
meeting, which was the president’s brainchild. The 54 countries on hand claimed
they had made progress in reducing the risk of a nuclear terrorist attack. But
some experts said the gains were modest.
“The accomplishments being announced today are very
concrete, but there’s really not that much new that wasn’t already in the
pipeline,” said Kenneth N. Luongo, co-chairman of the Fissile Materials Working
Group, a consortium of 60 nuclear experts.
To fully address the threat of nuclear
terrorism, Mr. Luongo said, countries need to accept uniform security
standards. Citing sovereignty concerns, however, many countries here resist
such measures.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister
Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan
and the increasingly frayed relationship between the Pakistan and the United
States.
Speaking before the meeting, Mr. Obama
acknowledged the recent strains but said he believed a parliamentary review of
the relationship, now under way in Pakistan, would put things on a firmer
footing.
“It’s important for us to have candid dialogue,
to work through these issues,” Mr. Obama said.
The summit itself focused on individual
achievements, like the removal of all stocks of highly enriched uranium from
Ukraine, an agreement to coordinate anti-smuggling efforts, and the joint
cleanup of the Semipalatinsk testing site in Kazakhstan.
“We have to get away from this small ball,” Mr.
Luongo said, “and start looking at the big picture.”
Michael
Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow.
[Once glimpsed, democracy was vigorously fought
for; once achieved, it was jealously guarded. African countries that had seemed
immobile in relation to the Arab Spring in the Middle East were bubbling, just
beneath or sometimes above the surface. Even the coup leaders in Mali felt
obliged to repeat that they would soon call elections, though there was
skepticism that they would do so. And Mali notwithstanding, coups are in steady
decline from their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. ]
DAKAR, Senegal — After 50 years of independence, the path to
democracy does not follow an obvious, straight line in this region, just as it
did not in the West — the model for most citizens here — where it was centuries
in the making.
That is the most obvious lesson from the
sharply contrasting experiences of two West African nations over the past week:
Senegal, where power is being transferred peacefully after a fair election on
Sunday, and Mali, where after two decades
of relative success, democracy was snuffed out in a military coup on Thursday.
Across the region, democracy, even amid
setbacks, seemed to inch forward. In Niger and in Guinea, military rulers gave
up power to the people over the last 18 months, while any subsequent
encroachments were vigorously resisted. In Ivory Coast, a power grab provoked a
citizen uprising, later amplified by foreign firepower. In Liberia, a losing
opposition candidate cried foul last fall after an election widely seen as
credible, hoping that citizens would follow him, but few did. And in Nigeria,
even the chaotic and bloody election of last spring is celebrated as an
improvement.
What remained constant is both the aspiration
and the discernment of the people. The ordinary citizens wanted a voice, and
seemed to know — even in the most depressed slums of Conakry, Niamey, Bamako or
Dakar — that democracy was the best way to get it.
Once glimpsed, democracy was vigorously fought
for; once achieved, it was jealously guarded. African countries that had seemed
immobile in relation to the Arab Spring in the Middle East were bubbling, just
beneath or sometimes above the surface. Even the coup leaders in Mali felt
obliged to repeat that they would soon call elections, though there was
skepticism that they would do so. And Mali notwithstanding, coups are in steady
decline from their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.
On Monday, a thousand citizens turned out in
Bamako, the capital of Mali, calling for a return to democracy. And international
condemnation of the coup was swift. In Washington, the Obama administration
announced that it was suspending its nonhumanitarian aid to Mali and urged the
leaders of what it termed “a mutiny” to return the country to civilian rule.
“We want to see the elected government restored
as quickly as possible so that we can get to the elections, which are scheduled
to go forward shortly,” said the State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria
Nuland.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke
by telephone with President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, who is leading
efforts to negotiate a settlement in Mali. Ms. Nuland said American officials
were also in discussion with the coup’s leader, Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo. The
ousted president, Amadou Toumani Touré, was
believed to be safely in hiding with loyalists, Ms. Nuland said.
“This is an unacceptable situation, where
democracy is being undermined in Africa, and it’s got to be restored,” Ms.
Nuland said.
Meanwhile, the cheering crowds that packed
downtown Dakar, the Senegalese capital, late Sunday night were celebrating not
so much the victory of the winner, Macky Sall, as the upholding
of an ideal that appeared threatened by the maneuverings of the incumbent, President
Abdoulaye Wade.
“The defeat of Wade,” Le Quotidien, a daily
newspaper in Dakar, wrote on its front page Monday, “has transformed itself
into a victory for the people, and for Senegalese democracy.”
Over the course of several years, a slow boil
of resentment against Mr. Wade built. He was blamed for installing his son in
positions of power, with an eye to a possible takeover; for trying to change
the constitution to make re-election easier; and for seeking a third term when
Senegalese law limits the president to two. What the country achieved over 50
years — a chief executive with some accountability at the ballot box — appeared
to be under assault.
In the streets here was a sense of offense. The
president was breaking the rules. “We put him in power, and we had hope,” said
Lamine Diop, who was waiting to vote in the first round last month. “But he’s
tried to force things, and that’s it.”
He added, looking at the long lines of voters,
“We’ve never seen this kind of mobilization before.”
Mr. Wade, with his limousines and his grandiose
projects, was seen as setting himself above the people who had put him in
office. “Abdoulaye Wade was living in an ivory tower,” Le Quotidien wrote on
Monday. “He had lost all sense of the reality being lived by his fellow
citizens.”
Three times over the last 10 months, the
Senegalese pushed back against Mr. Wade.
First, there was a large-scale demonstration in
Dakar in June that forced him to retreat on his constitutional changes; next
came voting in which he finished with a humiliating 34 percent of the vote,
after months of boasting that he would easily win a first-round knockout; and
Sunday, he suffered what appeared to be a crushing defeat in the runoff at the
hands of Mr. Sall, his former prime minister.
“A victory on the order of a plebiscite,” Mr.
Sall said early Monday, savoring its scale.
Senegal, with its long tradition of voting and
respect for the rules, was often seen as an exception on the continent.
Having experienced the satisfactions of
democracy, citizens here were more fervent in its defense. Senegal’s democracy
has hardly functioned perfectly. A one-party state for a sizable portion of its
history, the country’s rubber-stamp Parliament and weak judiciary offer no
checks on the powerful executive.
Still, the emotional attachment of the
Senegalese to the democratic ideal can be found even in some of the continent’s
most oppressed spots. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, where the same
dictator has ruled for more than three decades, courageous citizens can be
found whispering their longings for the ballot box.
The Senegalese know what the people of Mali
have rediscovered, that democracy must be arduously built and fiercely
protected. Otherwise, it is as close to extinction as an autocrat’s pen or a junior
officer’s gun barrel.
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from
Washington.
