Welcome to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My name is Mark Medish. I'm vice president for studies here. This luncheon is part of a series of discussions we've been hosting at the Carnegie Endowment to commemorate the 200th anniversary since the start of official diplomatic relations between America and Russia. If you do the math, this means that something happened in 1807. (Laughter.) It all started with an exchange of diplomatic notes that year. The date, in fact, is a bit fluid though because there were emissaries moving back and forth between the two countries before that. In addition, it took John Quincy Adams and Andre Dashkov, the first full ambassadors, more than a year after 1807, to make it over to the respective capitals. So this date is a bit of a moving feast. We can keep doing this for awhile. One should also note that the shape of the two countries has changed over the 200 years. The Russian Federation today is not exactly the same shape as the Russian empire in 1807. And as for the United States, in 1807 we had only 17 states in the Union, nothing farther west than Ohio. So things have changed a bit. In addition, careful historians will not that we have not actually had 200 years of continuous diplomatic relations. They were almost interrupted during the U.S. Civil War and they were in fact interrupted after the Russian Revolution for about 15 years. Anyway, the 200 years have seen many ups and downs in the bilateral relationship. We happen to be living through a period of heightened tension in this important relationship, so we're particularly glad and honored to have with us an almost full faculty of the past and serving ambassadors of the United States and Russia with us today participating in these discussions over a two-day period here in Washington. They've been meeting together in private, now in public, reflecting on the past, but also brainstorming about a way forward. I'd like to thank our sponsors who've made these discussions possible: Boris Jordan, of the Sputnik Group in Moscow, British Petroleum, the Washington Group International. Our panel today, and you see them behind me, or most of them anyway, have comprised 13 past and serving ambassadors. I think we have nine up on the dais. Rather than go through all of their biographies, I draw your attention to the brochure, which contains detailed summaries There are four designated hitters today, two from each side. I'm not sure where you're all sitting behind me, and I apologize for having my back to you, but they are Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, who served in Washington from 1986 to 1990. He is now a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Vladimir Lukin, who was ambassador in Washington 1992 to 1994, he currently serves as the ombudsman for Human Rights of the Russian Federation. From the American side, the designated hitters are Tom Pickering Oh, Art. (Laughter.) I apologize. The designated hitters are Arthur Hartman who served in Moscow as ambassador in the 1980s and Jim Collins, who served in Moscow 1997 to 2001 and I'm proud to say is the director of the Russia-Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment here in Washington. I'd also like to recognize all the work of Sergei Rogov, who has been a co-organizer of these discussions, and of Tom Graham, who has been a special advisor to our group. Our moderator today, I'm delighted to introduce, Jill Doherty, whom all of you know. She is the U.S. affairs editor for CNN International. She previously served as CNN Moscow correspondent in the late 1990s. She's been a White House correspondent. She's been at CNN since 1983 and she received her B.A. in Russian Studies from the University of Michigan. We're delighted to have you here. Without further ado, Jill? Thank you. Thank you very much, Mark. This is a wonderful event and I'm very, very grateful that I was asked to participate. For me, this is like having dessert before dinner because we have so many minds here, great minds, who have dealt with relations between the two countries for so many years, and minds out there, some people I'm sure who have years of experience and we want to get a lot of questions in. So perhaps, I can just layout a little bit about how we hope to do this. As was mentioned, there will be simultaneous translation, and you have headphones, if you don't have them, in the rear. We will open up with our four designated hitters here for maybe 20, 25 minutes, and then open it up to the floor. And I would just ask each individual, including the ambassadors, if they would, just to identify themselves so that on tape we have who was asking questions. I'd like to start out one other thing is, as has been noted, the ambassadors told me that they are not representing the official positions of their governments. This is their opinion and maybe that will be even more interesting. We'll have to see how this goes. But if we could begin, diplomats of course think long-term, think history. Journalists have a much more limited attention span, and so we tend to ask more immediate questions. And I'd like to start with an immediate question. And that would be, both countries are facing elections that are coming up next year. And the predictions among many are that things are already rocky and they could get even more rocky as we get down that road with potential leaders of both countries trying to prove that they are strong, potentially strong leaders of their countries, perhaps a macho effect, if you will. Do we believe do you believe, and perhaps let's start with Ambassador Collins, since you are so involved now in all of this with Carnegie. If you would, do you believe that this is inevitable? Are we doomed to face some rocky months as we get into that election period? Could anything possibly be done to avoid this? Ambassador Collins? Well, Jill, I first of all want to say welcome to many friends and many faces I have worked with and to thank everyone for coming. I think we've had two days of discussions and we had had a chance to meet with some members of the Senate. We had a chance to meet at the White House with the National Security Advisor, and we have talked among ourselves. And I think maybe the way to sort of approach this question would be just to give one or two thoughts about what was on our minds as we talked. I think one basic point was a consensus that the relationship is not what it should be or can be. And that is disturbing and something about which all of us should be thinking and trying to development an approach to improve things into the future. The second is that we are at something of a turning point. We are going to have a change of leadership in both countries over the next 18 months or so. That will mean a transition. I think there was concern certainly, I would find it to be of concern if the differences in U.S. Russia relations become a major subject of the political debate, it probably would not be helpful. But what we focused on more was what could be done in the next 18 months or so to lay a base for a better relationship in a new administration in both countries. And I think we may want to address a number of those questions. We don't think it is inevitable that relations have to be bad, I would say. But we do think in the statement we've put out, and in our discussions, which we can develop here, that there are certain steps that would make sense in the short-term and then there are some things that we should about in the longer term to improve the dialogue. And let me leave it at that and maybe you could Okay, thank you very much. Ambassador Lukin, could you comment on this on a turning point and some disturbing facts of the relationship right now. What let's try to be as specific as possible what would be the primary thing that should be done right now by both countries to avoid that clash, which could come at the beginning of the election campaigns? I think that between the two large countries like Russia and the U.S., there always were in the past and are in the present and will be in the future the elements that keep them closer and the elements that pull them apart. You cannot avoid it, but I don't expect that there together the fight against international terrorism. And there are also other issues such as arms reduction and arms control, non"¢proliferation, which is (inaudible) weapon related issue (inaudible) of both nuclear weapons and of other types of OMD, of weapons of mass destruction, and out of those, I would like to specifically highlight the most dangerous, perhaps as far as short-term issue that are biological weapons, issues that bring us together, and we hope will continue to be to be together as far as those. There are also dividing issues. However, as we discussed them among our ambassadorial group, so to speak, these dividing issues are actually less important. They tend to be regional or local, and here is an example. Kosovo would be one example, and even the Middle East host of issues, as important as they are, they are regional issues, although even in the Middle East, to a certain extent, and in certain aspects, we're working together. There're also some major irritants, of course, and needless to say, an election campaign just happens to be a period of time and provides a set of circumstances where, of course, the temperature will rise, and the passions will fly, both politically and generally domestically; and in the next 18 months, as my friend and colleague Ambassador Collins said here, our goal for the next 18 months is to make sure that (inaudible) to not reach too high, and not become too pervasive. To an election campaign in Russia, for instance, it's quite possible to say something like, what we're trying to do is make sure is to make Russia a strong, influential power that is friendly with its neighbors but also assumes to a deserving position, or alternatively one can say there are some countries, major countries, that are preventing Russia from becoming a great power, hence we should really have a better relationship. They don't like us, so why should we like them? So both scenarios are completely feasible and possible, and the second scenario, the latter scenario, is something that should be avoided. Both it should avoided in the Russian territory during the elections in Russia, and something along those lines should also be avoided on the U.S. as well. That would be the minimal set of objectives. As far as the maximal set of objectives is that perhaps on the European elections, we can achieve some practical agreements and create something for the future. You may say it is unlikely because people's minds will be busy thinking about something else It very well may be unlikely, but there have been such precedents. You will remember, of course, that none other than President Bush, Senior, was actually able to reach a very important agreement with us a few days before he left the White House, which was a major disarmament agreement. So I support the maximal set of objectives, but even if we realize and implement the minimal set of objectives, we will still open up great prospects and vistas for work. Thank you very much. Ambassador Lukin just mentioned Kosovo. And that's certainly one of the greatest challenges that we have right now the U.S. ready to recognize it if it declares independence, Russia adamantly opposed to that. Is resolution of this very thorny problem possible, or are the sides too far apart, and perhaps Ambassador Dubinin would be a good person to answer that, please. Yury Vladimirovich. Dear Ms. Moderator, with your permission I would first like to make a few comments of a general sort of nature, which is what we agreed upon, before this event. I would like to revisit how and when I ended up in the United States. I came here in the spring of 1986, and we all know very well that not only it was a period of time when the confrontation was peaking and going really high up, and the peak of confrontation between the Soviet Union and the USA, but it was of course the highest point of tension bilaterally. At that point in time, there was no commercial air traffic, either by an American airlines or a Russian airlines. And I arrive in the United States on an El Italia flight, and the only question that I was asked as I got out of the plane was Mr. Dubinin, are you bringing in spaghetti in your bags. That was what they greeted me with. I was leaving the United States in four years, in 1990, and just as a reminder, at that time, both our leaders in Malta had a summit in Malta, and there's actually a monument there had declared the Cold War over, and there is a monument in Malta to that effect. And I left by a nonstop Washington, D.C.-to-Moscow flight. So within those four years I was a witness, and to a certain extent a participant, in the U-turn in the global politics that had been affected primarily by two driving forces, the United States and the then Soviet Union. And out of that, I derive a very important conclusion for myself: I think that the cooperation between our two countries is of great, vast, crucial importance when it comes to dealing with issues of global, not just bilateral, but global security, and with issues of a global peace. Look at the world we're living in now. We're living in a world where the conflict potential is actually on the rise, and both the number of (inaudible) and the number of issues that threaten peace are increasing. So to answer your first question, distinguished Ms. Moderator, in terms of what I think about the possibility and prospects of resolution of that issue, I would like to say that the role of the United States and of Russia and the factor of their cooperation in solving the single most important problem, the problem that everything else, including the Kosovo issue, depends on and I am referring to solving the problem of decreasing the conflict potential and reversing the conflict potential trend. The United States and Russia can, and should, have a very important role, and the most recent meeting between our presidents shows that the development of the moods among the leadership of our countries, in this respect, is going precisely in that direction. That is why, despite all of the difficulties that both countries are going to face in the course of negotiations, I hope that this trend in our relations is going to develop, and for the benefit not just of our two countries, but also for the entire international community. And this, incidentally, is the most important and the most effective lever for the image of our two countries in the world. Every success of our countries in this direction is going to increase and strengthen the image of our countries. Now on the subject of Kosovo: Indeed, I am dealing right now, involved in state activities. I work as a professor at the Institute of International Relations; I teach diplomacy. In other words, I'm trying to figure out what is it that I've been doing for 45 years, and then when I understand this I'm trying to teach it to my students. And my main subject is negotiations because when it comes to Russian diplomacy, the solving of problems by means of negotiations is a priority. And we teach our future diplomats the craft of negotiating. And this, incidentally, also has to do with the second question you had raised, namely Kosovo needs to be resolved only through negotiations. This corresponds not only to the best traditions of the world diplomacy, but also to the democratic approach. Now both countries of ours are democratic, therefore we need to know the opinion of our peoples, what is it that they want, and to solve the objectives, the problems the way the people want and not the way this or that country wants us to do. Thank you. More specifically, on Kosovo, is it impossible now; are the two countries off on completely different paths on this issue? You know, one of the interesting things to me as an observer is the way issues that are not issues directly between our two countries get dragged through because we take different positions on the basic dialogue that's going on. From my point of view, the United States and Russia are the world's leading nuclear powers. The nuclear threat, through diversion or just sloppiness, is with us; we ought to be doing more about it. We have some good basic agreements, things like counting rules that nobody wants to reinvent, that would give us the basis for looking at a longer-term way of controlling nuclear weapons and indeed, give us some idea of how we ought to proceed with chemical weapons and biological weapons. It seems to me we have that kind of responsibility. I would hope on an issue like Kosovo and I don't know much about it, luckily we would feel that it's not central to our relationship. Other things are much more important. The world community is taking a hand on the Kosovo problem, and it should not be made into a bilateral issue, as if we have total control over what might happen or indeed if Russia has control over what might happen. We ought to keep our eye on the ball. Now, this is difficult to do in an election period. I would hope that the relationship with Russia does not figure in our election campaign; or if it does, hopefully it can figure in a more positive manner. But there is something else that I would love to do, and that is abolish paranoia. (Laughter.) It seems to me paranoia comes out in these electoral campaigns. If you look at Russia today, the number of nationalists who are saying, you know, that America is against us, and every action that we take is somehow aimed at the heart of Russia. And if you look around at some of the debates that go on in our country, as they lift up the rug and see, you know, who's behind what, there's much too much emphasis on the direct threat. Luckily, we're living in a period when the direct threat has been very much diminished, and those of us I've been out of government now for 20 years, and doing much more profitable things (laughter) when you go back to Russia, it's a different place. And you talk to the children and the grandchildren of some of our colleagues, and they're a different bunch. And that's the first thing they say to us, that it is going to be a different country as the new generation comes along. And we Americans, who are so impatient with progress, and making the world over in our image, it seems to me you have to be a bit relaxed and a bit forgetful, or I think we ought to think more about how long it took us to get certain matters straightened out in our country. This is going to happen in Russia, and the sooner we wake up to that and stop making every little thing that happens there central to an issue that, to me, is not central to our relationships, and keep our eye on the main thing that we ought to be doing in the Russian relationship, which is getting control of these very, very dangerous weapons, and working together where we can, which I think we're doing in places like North Korea, Iran, and other areas, in order to help find solutions. But it's not dependent on us alone; it's something where you have to build coalitions and work together. And one last point. It seems to me our Russian colleagues ought, in some ways, to be rather grateful to us. At this moment, we have two of our leading Russian experts, one as Defense secretary and one as our secretary of State. And certainly, those are people they ought to be able to talk to, have some understanding of the history of this relationship, and who I think have the capacity to lower their tone. Thank you. You know, there's an issue that probably is on everybody's mind right now, and that is the issue of energy. And the question I'd like to pose, and I think it would be to Ambassador Lukin, is that what does Russia want to do with its energy supplies? Does it want to, in a capitalist sense, sell oil, sell gas, and that is as far as it goes? Or is it, as many suspect and especially in Europe, that it is part of, let's say, a weapon in the foreign policy of Russia, to be used in a political sense as well as an economic sense. How would you answer that? Russia is a very original country, therefore it wants to use the resources it has, and the ones that are in excess, with regard to its demand. Russia wants to sell it, and to sell it as expensively as possible. I think it's a very original approach to the issue. And nothing like this ever happened in America, of course. That's the entire strategy. I don't know of any other strategy. At first, there was a strategy of the following kind: Since our neighbors are good, they come to Moscow and come up with pretty speeches, took pictures together with our leaders, including the president, therefore, we have to cut our prices for gas and oil. All of this was very nice; they liked it, but this was not very much to the liking of the Russians, of the Russian citizens, of the taxpayers. And as a result, the position has changed somewhat lately. Very mildly, very gently, the prices started rising; and our neighbors, of course, didn't like it. But they have to choose who likes it less. Again, we are very original as a country. When in America, when the question raises, do they like it or do they not when it comes to our steps, the Americans make a priority of their own citizens and their opinions. But what's interesting is that previously, Russia was accused of wanting to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries because, by lowering prices in a number of countries, it allegedly carries out its influence. Now, we started raising our prices. I'm talking about the oil companies such as Gazprom. And now, we're being accused that we're interfering into the other countries' internal affairs because we are raising our prices. If they show us some third way, we'll be very careful in studying it, and we'll take it into account. But so far, we have only one of those two ways at our disposal. I think, in reality, the best is the market approach. If the price is such-and-such, you need to pay it, and at the same time, this is precisely fair approach because more or less everybody in the world proceeds on this kind of a premise. Of course, our Gazprom is not impeccable as a corporation. I personally believe that it needs to be reformed gradually, but this is an internal question, question of time, of various relations between our anti-monopoly committee and a number of other governmental bodies. But gradually I think it's going to improve, but there is nothing perfect in this world. Just, perhaps, this could be our last question and then throw it out. But do you, how do you react to what you just heard from Ambassador Lukin? Is it, well, low prices, high prices; is it politics; is it a weapon; is it economics? What is Russia trying to do with its energy? Well, I think at base one should acknowledge that Russia, like about 70 percent of the rest of the world, wants to have the bulk of its oil reserves and gas reserves under some kind of national control. Russia's not unique; but what it is, I think, and this is an important factor, is in some sense new to the global marketplace in a rather traditional way. And most of the entities that are working from the Russian side in this global marketplace are, if not new entities, at least they are new structures and changing structures that basically have a history of 10 to 15 years, and are quite young, if you take Standard Oil by comparison, or some of the other oil companies that are big in the world. And I think, what I would say is that first of all, the world energy markets have a way of taming anybody's exceeding ambitions over time. It is a global market; the opportunities for any supplier to dominate it and to manipulate it in an overly effective way, I think, has pretty much been disproven by the history of OPEC and other efforts. The unique relationship that Russia had in the Soviet period, and the immediate post Soviet period, as an energy supplier to its immediate neighbors and those who were formerly in the network was inevitably going to change. I don't think it was a credible system in which Russia provided its energy resources at subsidized prices to neighbors, that that was going to last. Whether political or economic reasons, I just don't think it had a future. And similarly, for the neighbors, to expect or build their futures on the idea that a major supplier of energy was going to continue to do it at sub-market prices was probably not a very wise set of policies. Now, that is not to say that in my view, there haven't been many, to put it mildly, not very effective diplomatic approaches to resolving arguments over gas prices and supplies and so forth; there have been. But I think everyone in that part of the world is going to live with Russia as a major gas and oil supplier, and energy supplier. They're going to have to figure out how to develop and organize those markets, and that sometimes that's going to have serious bumps in the road, and sometimes it will go smoothly. But we're at the early stages of it, and in the long run I think my colleague, Art Hartman, today made the point that these markets have a tendency, basically, to structure themselves and to organize themselves on the basis of what costs are and what the market will bear. And that is the world in which all of these neighbors of Russia, and Russia, are going to have to learn to live. And that's what I would expect to emerge. Thank you. Well, maybe we could open it up to some questions. I believe we have some microphones that are moving around the floor. And if there are some questions, we could start. One thing, if people could please identify themselves before they give the question. Bill, I think you were the first person. The microphone is on its way to you.
member. 
