Thread: Bush Lectures Putin on the Joys of Democracy

Bush Lectures Putin on the Joys of Democracy

By ELISABETH BUMILLER, The New York Times

RIGA, Latvia (May 7) - President Bush used the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat to warn President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday that "no good purpose is served by stirring up fears and exploiting old rivalries" in the former Soviet republics on his borders.

"All the nations that border Russia will benefit from the spread of democratic values, and so will Russia itself," Mr. Bush said in a speech in the Small Guild House, a neo-gothic meeting hall in the heart of Riga's Old City. "Stable, prosperous democracies are good neighbors, trading in freedom and posing no threat to anyone."

The day before a meeting and dinner with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bush warned him once again about retreating on democracy, saying that "all free and successful countries have some common characteristics - freedom of worship, freedom of the press, economic liberty, the rule of law and the limitation of power through checks and balances."

In the last year the United States has grown concerned over Mr. Putin's prosecution of business leaders, his increasing control over the press and his involvement in the affairs of Georgia and other neighbors.

Mr. Putin has not reacted positively to such criticism from Mr. Bush in the past, and this week he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that Mr. Bush had little business lecturing him about democracy when the 2000 presidential election in the United States was decided by the Supreme Court.

In a joint news conference with Baltic leaders in Riga earlier in on Saturday, Mr. Bush put more pressure on Mr. Putin by calling for "free and open and fair" elections in Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe, whose president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, is backed by Mr. Putin. Mr. Bush also did not dispute the premise of a question from a reporter implying that the United States is behind revolutionary change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

"The idea of countries helping others become free, I hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary, but rational foreign policy, as decent foreign policy, as humane foreign policy," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush, who is on the second day of a five-day trip to Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia and Georgia, is trying to ensure that his attendance at the celebration of the 60th anniversary in Moscow on Monday of Nazi Germany's defeat does not endorse the Soviet repression and rise of totalitarianism that followed.

So in his speech here, Mr. Bush leveled his harshest criticism against Russia for its actions after World War II, and seemed to lean as much toward a denunciation of postwar Soviet actions as celebratory words for the Nazi defeat.

"As we mark a victory of six decades ago, we are mindful of a paradox," Mr. Bush said. "For much of Germany, defeat led to freedom. For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but not the end of oppression." He added that "the captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history."

The Russians have been angered by Mr. Bush's trip to Latvia and his scheduled visit to Georgia on Monday and Tuesday, and have accused the United States of meddling in the affairs of their former republics, now independent nations with contentious relationships with Moscow.

Mr. Bush's words in Latvia on Saturday seemed likely to anger the Russians even more, because he repeatedly used the word "occupation" to describe the Russian actions in the Baltics - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - after World War II. The Russians have furiously responded that they were invited in.

"Look, I fully understand there's a lot of anger and frustration involved in the three Baltic countries about the occupation," Mr. Bush said at the news conference. "I expressed that to President Putin. But he didn't need me to tell him, he fully understands there's a lot of frustrations and anger about what took place."

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact in August 1939, just weeks before Germany's invasion of Poland precipitated World War II. Soviet troops joined German forces in occupying Poland, and the next year the Soviet Union also entered Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and incorporated them into the Soviet Union as republics. After the Soviet Union joined the war on the side of the Allies in 1941, German forces overran the three Baltic countries and occupied them, with local support, until Soviet troops retook them near the end of the war.

Mr. Bush added at the news conference, "my hope is that we're now able to move beyond that phase of history into a phase that is embracing democracy and free societies."

But in his speech, Mr. Bush indirectly acknowledged that the United States and Britain shared some blame for the annexation of the Baltics, noting that the 1945 Yalta agreement, in which Europe was carved up by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, was in an "unjust tradition" of earlier treaties like the Munich and Molotov-Ribbentrop pacts.

"Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable," Mr. Bush said. "Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history."

Mr. Bush sought to tie democratic change in Eastern Europe to that he seeks in the Middle East. "Freedom is the only reliable path to peace," he said. "If the Middle East continues to simmer in anger and hopelessness, caught in a cycle of repression and radicalism, it will produce terrorism of even greater audacity and destructive power." He added that "we will not repeat the mistakes of other generations appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability."

Mr. Bush also had stern words for his hosts, the Latvians, telling them they had to respect the rights of the country's ethnic Russian minority, which has objected bitterly to economic discrimination and what the Russians say is a biased treatment of Russian and Soviet history in Latvia's schools.

"The promise of democracy is fulfilled by minority rights, and equal justice under the rule of law, and an inclusive society in which every person belongs," Mr. Bush said. He was headed to the Netherlands on Saturday night and planned to speak at an American war cemetery on Sunday.