Russia, US must overcome Cold War thinking: Clinton
Agence France-Presse | 10/14/2009 6:19 PM
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MOSCOW - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday admitted some officials in both the United States and Russia were stuck in Cold War thinking, as she urged Moscow to take a stronger stance on human rights.
In comments to students at Moscow State University and a liberal Russian radio station, Clinton said attacks on activists were of great concern to Washington and it was time for Russia's government to speak out more strongly.
Underlining problems that remain for US-Russian relations, she said there were people in both governments who were still living in the past and did not want the two former foes to cooperate.
"I will be the first to tell you that we have people in our government and you have people in your government who are still living in the past," Clinton said in the main hall of the Stalin-era Moscow State University building.
"They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent. They do not trust each other and we have to prove them wrong. That is our goal," she said.
In a question-and-answer session attended by around 2,000 students, Clinton did not give further details of which officials she meant.
US President Barack Obama had declared on the eve of his visit to Moscow in July he believed that Russia's strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin "has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."
Washington and Moscow are seeking to "reset" relations which were rocked in recent years by crises over Russia's war with Georgia, NATO expansion and stinging US criticism of the Russian human rights record.
Clinton met Tuesday with President Dmitry Medvedev but is not meeting with Putin -- a former president who is still widely seen as holding the true power in Russia -- as he is on a trip to China.
In an interview with Echo of Moscow radio, Clinton declared: "I would have enjoyed meeting with Prime Minister Putin. We had certainly intended to do so but our schedules did not work out."
She used her speech at Moscow State University to make a clarion call for human rights in Russia, which were severely eroded during Putin's eight years as president, according to activists and international rights groups.
"Citizens must be empowered to formulate the laws under which they live," she said at the university, standing beneath a Soviet-era mosaic featuring a large hammer and sickle.
"In an innovative society, people must be free to take unpopular decisions, disagree with conventional wisdom, know they are safe to peacefully challenge accepted practice and authority.
"That's why attacks on journalists and human rights defenders are of such great concern."
Russia has failed to find the killers of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya three years after she was shot dead in the stairwell of her apartment block in central Moscow.
Numerous other activists have been killed or attacked in recent years, including Politkovskaya's friend and collaborator Natalya Estemirova, who was murdered in July.
"Every country has its criminal elements, people who try to abuse power. But in the last 18 months... there have been many of these incidents," she told Echo of Moscow radio in her interview.
"I think we want the government to stand up and say this is wrong."
Clinton said in her meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev she had made clear "that we did not believe that enough was being done to ensure no one had impunity from prosecution."
The US secretary of state had on Tuesday met with some of Russia's top rights activists and journalists, responding to concerns that the United States would take a softer line on Russian rights issues amid improved relations.
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