Obama scraps planned Putin summit after Snowden leaks
President Barack Obama has decided to cancel a planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the aftermath of Moscow’s decision to grant asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
“Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.
“Given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” Carney said.
The White House had telegraphed this decision for weeks, repeatedly noting that Obama planned to attend a Group of 20 international summit in St. Petersburg but declining to reaffirm plans to sit down one-on-one with Putin.
[Related: Will the Snowden chill start a new Cold War?]
While the decision came after Putin’s government granted Snowden refuge for one year, American officials have taken pains to describe that dispute as only one of many that made the summit look increasingly like a pointless exercise. The list of irritants includes Putin’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose government has been slaughtering opposition to his regime, as well as the Russian leader’s crackdown on critics of his rule, and disputes over American missile defense plans.
It’s not clear what effect Obama’s decision will have on Russo-U.S. relations. Washington wants Moscow’s help in confronting Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons program, as well as in providing an “air bridge” used currently to supply U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan but that may play a big role in the withdrawal of troops by the end of 2014.
“There’s still a lot of business that we can do with them,” Obama told Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show" on Tuesday.
“But there have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality,” Obama added. “And what I consistently say to them, and what I say to President Putin, is that’s the past and we’ve got to think about the future, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cooperate more effectively than we do.”
Carney highlighted “achievements” of U.S.-Russian relations in Obama’s first term — a defense, in effect, of the president’s “reset” of ties with Moscow. And he made clear that the Snowden decision had played a role.
“Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship,” he said.
Obama will now make a stop in Sweden on Sept. 4-5.
A planned meeting between Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry and their Russian counterparts on Aug. 9 will go forward, Carney said.
