Posts Tagged ‘prime minister’
Cameron, You Dropped the Ball
Dear Prime Minister Cameron,
During your recent visit to Moscow you claimed that you would like to take on the skeptics of the Russian-British relationship. I would like to accept that challenge.
In your speech at Moscow State University on Sept. 12, you outlined two types of skeptics — those who believe Britain is untrustworthy and for whom the relationship is connected to the Soviet past, and those, you said, who believe that Russia should not modernize, innovate and open up.
Taking your second set of skeptics first, I can think of almost no one who believes that Russia should not modernize, innovate or open up. Where did you get that from? You would have to be reliving the Cold War to believe that Russia should be deliberately kept down in any way. All reasonable people want a modern Russia, even if we only define modernization narrowly, as the Kremlin has done, as scientific-technical modernization.
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Caving to the Kremlin
Judging from Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Moscow on September 12, the British government has decided to cave into the Russians in the long-running dispute over the November 2006 murder in London of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. The victim, who was highly critical of Vladimir Putin and had been given asylum in Britain in 2000, died an agonizing death at a North London hospital on November 23, three weeks after being poisoned with polonium 210—a rare and highly lethal radioactive substance. As a result of Russia’s unwillingness to cooperate with its investigation of the crime, Britain ended intelligence sharing with Moscow and introduced new visa restrictions on Russian businessmen trying to go to the UK. But Cameron’s meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin this week indicates that Britain is reassessing its Moscow strategy—and by extension, its view of the Russian leadership.
At the heart of the Litvinenko dispute has been the British authorities’ attempt to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, an ex-KGB bodyguard, as the prime suspect in the murder. Somehow—and this raises serious questions about the possible involvement of members of the Russian government—Lugovoi and his business partner, former military intelligence officer Dmitry Kovtun, obtained polonium 210 and brought it to London on two separate trips in October-November 2006, when they met with Litvinenko. Traces of polonium were later discovered in the hotels and restaurants they visited, as well as on a British Airways plane that Lugovoi traveled on and in the apartment of Kovtun’s ex-wife, whom he stayed with in Hamburg on his way to London.
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David Cameron’s trip to Russia: the message Moscow needs to hear
In his mission to rescue Anglo-Russian relations, David Cameron must insist on a radical clean-up in its economy, says Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador.
David Cameron today visits Moscow. This is not a routine item in his diary. No British prime minister has made a bilateral visit to Russia since 2005, and no Russian president has travelled to London since 2006. This has been an extraordinarily long gap in formal encounters between the leaders of two such significant countries.
The hiatus goes back to late 2006 and the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko. Russia refused to answer questions about apparent links of the FSB (Russia’s security agency) to the affair, or to extradite the suspected murderer. Relations accordingly went into the deep freeze. We shut off contacts with the FSB and expelled a number of Russian diplomats. The Russians retaliated with their own expulsions and put brutal pressure on our cultural arm, the British Council (in an act described by one observer as “like hitting a librarian”).
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David Cameron is ‘ignoring Russian crime problems’, according to leading investor
David Cameron is turning a blind eye to ‘spectacular criminality’ to avoid disrupting his Moscow trade mission, a leading investor claims.
Hermitage Capital boss Bill Browder, formerly the biggest investor in Russia, believes the Prime Minister is ‘afraid’ to address serious crimes against British firms, including the killing of Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The broadside came as documents seen by the Daily Mail revealed that officials complicit in Magnitsky’s death have been flying in and out of Britain with impunity.
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Human rights before Russian business
The Times
There are sound reasons for wanting to rebuild a working political relationship with Russia and most have to do with business. The country is on the cusp of major modernisation. It is a pivotal force in the European energy market. Anglo-Russian trade is up fifty per cent in the first six months of this year and if only the British played ball, sigh Russian officials, it could be so much more.
But this is not the time to surrender principled policies on human rights and the rule of law in return for commercial advantage. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, has told Britain to throw overboard its “ideological obsessions”, its Cold War hang-ups — by which he means dropping calls for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, wanted in Britain on suspicion of helping to kill Alexander Litvinenko in a spectacularly macabre London poisoning. Well, Mr Lavrov may regard this as ideological claptrap, but the British are right to treat it as a question of legal process. It is time that the Kremlin understood the difference.
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PM Pursues Litvinenko Murder on Moscow Visit
David Cameron has insisted that Britain will not give up on bringing the killer of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko to justice, as he kicked off his visit to Russia.
But the Prime Minister said the two governments had to end the “tit-for-tat culture” and work together despite festering tensions over the dissident’s murder.
It is the first visit by a British leader since the murder of Mr Litvinenko in London in 2006.
The poisoning of the Kremlin critic caused relations between the two countries to hit a post-Cold War low.
The wider aim of David Cameron’s visit is to increase trade and improve his relationship with the country’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, and Prime Minister Putin.
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Kremlin Sees No Reset in Historic Cameron Visit
A top Kremlin aide cautioned on Sunday that no “reset” looms in long-troubled relations with Britain, hours before Prime Minister David Cameron was to arrive in Moscow for the first visit by a British leader in six years.
Cameron is leading a delegation including Foreign Secretary William Hague and BP chief executive Bob Dudley to talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that he hopes will boost economic ties and perhaps mend some fences.
Relations have been strained since the polonium poisoning death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006 and the Russian government refused to extradite Britain’s prime suspect, State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi.
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David Cameron urged to challenge Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev
David Cameron has been urged by four former foreign secretaries to challenge the Russian government on a number of issues during his visit to Moscow.
They want President Dmitry Medvedev to be confronted over a perceived failure to protect business against corruption.
In a Sunday Times letter, they also call for the PM to raise the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. The call is from Labour’s Margaret Beckett, David Miliband, Jack Straw and Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
The letter says hundreds of thousands of Russian businessmen are detained in jails after falling victim to corruption sanctioned by the authorities. They refer to these people as “victims of an increasingly potent mix of corruption and lawlessness”.
In their letter, the former foreign secretaries state: “The dangers of this corruption do not stop at Russia’s borders and Alexander Litvinenko’s murder shows the consequences of such lawlessness hitting British shores.
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David Cameron urged to challenge Russia on human rights
David Cameron has been encouraged to challenge Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin about Russia’s human rights record during his trip to Moscow this week.
The prime minister will fly to Moscow today for talks, as the UK and Russian governments attempt to repair the damage to their relationship caused by the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
It is hoped the meetings will lead to improved trade links with Russia, but four former foreign secretaries have called on Mr Cameron not to turn a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuses.
Labour’s David Miliband, Jack Straw and Margaret Beckett, and Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind have written to the Sunday Times to raise the issue of the thousands of businessmen detained in Russian prisons.
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