The Mainichi talks with new U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos

The Mainichi talks with new U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos

U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos poses during an interview with the Mainichi in Tokyo. (Mainichi)The Mainichi speaks with new U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos about the Japan-U.S. alliance, cooperation on issues such as Japanese involvement in Afghanistan and global warming, and his visit to Hiroshima.

Mainichi: Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has said his government wishes to reassess key U.S.-Japanese agreements, including the realignment of U.S. forces in Okinawa and the Status of Forces Agreement. How far will the U.S. be willing to go in making changes to these agreements?

Roos: One thing that was critical from the president's point of view (when he came into office) was reaffirming in every way possible the commitment to the alliance and the bilateral relationship with Japan. After taking a look at the different policies that were in place, President Obama and Secretary Clinton recommitted to the realignment roadmap with Japan, something that the president and the secretary and the United States government feel is critically important to deterrence and sustainability of the alliance.

With respect to the process that the Japanese government is going through, (it's) going through its analysis of the agreements that are in place. ... It's our belief, hope and expectation that the (Hatoyama) government, just as the Obama government reconfirmed the realignment roadmap, (will reach) a similar conclusion.

Mainichi: Is there a time limit?

Roos: I think that the (Japanese) government is new. It's going through a diligent process ... analyzing past history and the agreements. These agreements took over a dozen years to negotiate. So, in fairness ... while (the government) continues to move diligently, I don't think it's appropriate to talk about any time limit.

M: With regard to the Japan-U.S. alliance, more than 20 years ago, former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield said that the U.S.-Japan relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. With the changes in the security environment since, how do you think the relationship should evolve?

R: (Ambassador Mansfield's words) are equally true today. ... The (Japan-U.S.) relationship has evolved into an equal partnership that will and has been addressing global issues. So, the United States looks forward to working with Japan both in a bilateral context and a multilateral context on a whole range of issues. ... (In particular), two issues are critically important to both president of the United States and the prime minister of Japan: the elimination of nuclear weapons and non-proliferation, as well as global climate change and renewable energy.

M: Prime Minister Hatoyama stated in his New York Times essay that he would like to see an East Asian Community established. What do you think about that?

R: The relationships between Japan and its neighbors ... (are) not a zero-sum game. The United States encourages enhanced good relations between Japan and its neighbors. It's important to say that the United States, being a Pacific-Asian nation, play a critical role with respect to the formation of a regional architecture.

M: On his recent visit to Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada pledged Japanese support for the Afghan government in areas such as job retraining programs for former Taliban insurgents. Would that be an alternative to the MSDF (Maritime Self-Defense Force) refueling mission in the Indian Ocean?

R: First of all, it's important to say that the United States and the other nations ... involved in the coalition are deeply appreciative of the significant role that Japan has played in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan ... including the refueling. ... Hopefully, (Japan's future) contributions will continue to build on the contributions Japan has made thus far.

M: In light of President Obama's Prague anti-nuclear speech, and his recent Nobel award, it seems likely there will be increasing calls on the president to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Would you advise the president to pay such a visit?

R: I had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima a week ago. ... It was a deeply moving experience. ... I look forward to having the opportunity to share my experience with the president. I think the decision (to visit) is a deeply personal decision that the president is going to have to make himself.

M: A U.S. ambassador to Japan has never attended the August memorial services in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you think you will attend next year?

R: Given the fact that I have just visited Hiroshima and was deeply moved by the experience, I will give it serious thought.

M: As a former Silicon Valley lawyer, will you be a catalyst in promoting U.S.-Japanese cooperation in such fields as new technology and new energy?

R: (In my 25 years in Silicon Valley), one thing that I learned is that the United States and Japan are two of the most innovative countries in the world, if not the two. An area I feel strongly about is the whole area of climate change and renewable energy. It's also an area of primary importance to Prime Minister Hatoyama and President Obama. So I hope to use my expertise and my background in that area to promote collaboration.

M: How do you feel, starting in your new job as ambassador, and working with a new Japanese government?

R: It is a fascinating time to be here in Japan. I have had the opportunity not only to get to know the new government leaders -- most of whom have already had deep ties to the United States. ... To contribute in even a small way to the strengthening of not only the strategic alliance but the bilateral relationship as a whole is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I'm excited to have the honor of being here. (Interviewed by Naoya Sugio, Foreign News Department)

(Mainichi Japan) October 14, 2009

Clinton Calls for Joint Missile-Defense System on Russia Trip

Clinton Calls for Joint Missile-Defense System on Russia Trip



Clinton Calls for Joint Missile-Defense System on Russia Trip

By Janine Zacharia

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrapping up a three-day trip to Russia, said the U.S. and Russia should work toward creating a joint missile-defense system to combat common threats.

In remarks to students at Moscow State University, Clinton rebuked those in the U.S. and in Russia who remain locked in a Cold War mentality that precludes the trust necessary for such cooperation.

“We have people in our government and you have people in your government who are still living in the past,” she said. “They don’t believe that 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.”

If the U.S. and Russia were one day to announce a joint plan on missile defense, this would be a “very positive outcome,” she said in a gilded auditorium on a stage flanked by carved images of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

Missile defense is among the issues that have divided the U.S. and Russia in recent years. President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush administration plan to station radars and missile interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland was welcomed in Russia.

During Clinton’s meetings in Moscow, Russian officials showed interest in cooperation on missile defense, U.S. officials said.

‘Unpopular Positions’

Clinton’s trip was aimed at outlining opportunities for collaboration with Russia on a wide range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and the war in Afghanistan. She made gentle jabs at Russia’s record on free speech.

“People must be free to take unpopular positions,” she said. “Attacks on journalists and human rights defenders here in Russia” are “a threat to progress.”

On Oct. 7, Clinton issued a statement marking the third anniversary of the killing of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, whose murderers have never been brought to justice.

During her visit, Clinton renewed U.S. support for Georgia, which fought a war with Russia last year, acknowledging that the U.S. and Russia “won’t see eye to eye” on the issue.

Georgia’s U.S.-trained army was routed by Russia in the five-day war in August 2008 over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. Russia later recognized South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia, as independent countries in the face of criticism from the U.S. and many European countries. Russia has deployed 1,700 soldiers in both regions.

Georgia Monitors

Obama defended Georgia’s territorial integrity during a visit to Moscow in July.

Clinton said monitors should be permanently deployed in Georgia to prevent further outbreaks of violence.

“We believe that it’s important to have a constant presence of observers and peacekeepers so that there’s no basis, no room, for something that would lead to further bloodshed,” Clinton said at Moscow State University.

Students at the university, founded in 1755, asked Clinton about U.S. priorities in Russia, differences over Georgia, what Clinton thought about the global economic crisis and what book had inspired her. With a nod to her audience, she selected Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.

During her visit, Clinton repeatedly invoked the Obama administration’s effort to “reset” relations with Russia.

At a dedication of a statue of American poet Walt Whitman, sculpted by the same artist who created a statue of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, Clinton said: “Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry, we are now resetting our relationship in the 21st century.”

From Moscow, Clinton flew to Kazan, capital of the oil-rich Tatarstan region. Clinton was greeted by women dressed in traditional costumes who presented her with a mound of chak- chak, a local dessert. She later met with regional leader Mintimer Shaimiyev and visited the province’s most famous mosque, Kul Sharif.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Kazan at jzacharia@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 14, 2009 08:31 EDT

Letter from Moscow: Russia torn between past and future

Posted on Wed, Oct. 14, 2009

Letter from Moscow: Russia torn between past and future

By TOM LASSETER
McClatchy Newspapers

Standing before a massive mosaic of red Soviet flags and flanked by engraved quotations from Marx and Lenin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gazed out at more than a thousand Russian university students and implored them to look to the future.

Clinton, however, spoke not in a fancy rented conference space full of mostly pro-Western graduate business students, as President Barack Obama did in July, but at Moscow State University, in a house that Josef Stalin built as a monument to Russia's Communist glory.

Moscow State's main hall is in a towering castle-meets-skyscraper landmark of Soviet gothic architecture. It reportedly was constructed by gulag labor as part of Stalin's ruthless quest to remake his capital into a 20th century socialist metropolis.

Eighteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 21st century Russia is still trying to find itself, stomping and stammering its way between hubris and disaster, dictatorship and democracy, and more than anything, between its past and its future.

Clinton's remarks and the students' questions and reactions Wednesday revealed more about the nation's unsettled identity and its ambivalent relations with the West than do the latest Kremlin invective or U.S. analysts opining about the post-Soviet landscape.

People in both the American and Russian governments remain stuck in the suspicion and threats of the Cold War, Clinton said, but it's time to "be smarter than our past."

"They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent," Clinton said. "They do not trust each other, and we have to prove them wrong."

Freshman Pavel Yankovsky was among the first to take the microphone: Nervously, he inquired about the financial crisis and why it started in the U.S. Like all the students who spoke, his English was good and his question seemed well rehearsed.

Clinton walked the audience through an abbreviated history of bad mortgages, derivatives and the false notion that free markets are infallible.

"It all seemed like a great idea at the time," she said, launching into an explanation of how the need for more checks and balances in the economy reminds one of the balance of power in the American government.

Afterward, Yankovsky, a thoughtful 17-year-old in a dark suit, with a bushy haircut threatening to go wild, didn't talk about the details of Clinton's response so much as the feeling he got listening to her. "It was brilliant," he said.

"I think that is the main thing our countries should work on, moving from the past, Cold War era," he said. What about the Soviet propaganda on the stage behind him? Yankovsky flicked his hand in that direction without looking and said: "I think that the past we should leave as the past."

Much of Russia, however, is torn between past and present.

On one hand, there's a push for an open economy, and President Dmitry Medvedev talks of fighting corruption and, perhaps, ensuring greater protection of civil liberties.

On the other, Russia remains an authoritarian state where there's little rule of law, human rights workers are assassinated, and the bloody Soviet history has undergone renewed revisions. One telling example: A committee set up earlier this year to "counter attempts to falsify history" - often meaning efforts to document the terror unleashed by Stalin - will include intelligence representatives from Russia's domestic and foreign spy services.

The country "is still in the process of searching for its own identity," said Yuri Rogulyov, a professor at Moscow State University who teaches, among other things, American history. "Russia is changing, and it's a very contradictory process."

On Wednesday, the autumn sun glinted off the hammers and sickles that still adorn the university building's facade, and, of course, the Soviet star shining on top.

Inside, Yvgenia Kuzminova, a sophomore in global studies, asked whether the U.S. is focused more on economic or military affairs in its relationship with Russia.

Clinton said that while important, those sorts of topics had for years too narrowly defined the U.S.-Russian conversation.

Asked what she thought of Clinton's remarks, Kuzminova later said that while they were interesting, they were "full of general issues" and lacking any surprises. And the idea of revamping ties between her country and Clinton's?

"There are deep-seated and bad memories of the Cold War, and it's not an easy thing to move beyond," Kuzminova said. "There will be psychological barriers."

Before Clinton walked into the hall, she'd helped unveil a statue of Walt Whitman on the university campus. At its base is a plaque quoting a letter from Whitman about Russians and Americans seeming to be different, but also being alike in many ways. Most students ignored it, instead clustering in groups between classes.

Alex Lazutkin, an economics instructor, stopped to peer at the new addition and chat.

Americans think they won the Cold War, he said, while Russians remember not defeat, but throwing off the yoke of Communism.

Lazutkin cricked his neck a bit and looked at the statue again.

"It might be that most people don't understand the connection between Walt Whitman and Moscow State University," he said, in a slightly puzzled tone. "I'm afraid that the message might have been lost."

© 2009 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com

In Moscow, Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System

October 15, 2009

In Moscow, Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System

By MARK LANDLER

KAZAN, Russia — On a day that took her from an elite Moscow university to this bustling city in Russia’s Muslim hinterland, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid tribute on Wednesday to religious tolerance, while also challenging Russia’s leaders to open their political system and allow more dissent.

In a speech to nearly 1,000 students at Moscow State University, Mrs. Clinton spoke far more forcefully about human rights and the rule of law than she did on a trip to China earlier this year. Russia, she said, could best fulfill its potential by protecting basic freedoms.

“That’s why attacks on journalists and human rights activists are such a great concern, because it is a threat to progress,” she said. “The more open Russia will become, the more Russia will contribute.”

As if to illustrate that point, Mrs. Clinton then traveled from Moscow to Kazan, the 1,000-year-old capital of Tatarstan, a Russian republic where Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics live together peacefully, with none of the violent separatism that afflicts places like Chechnya.

Mrs. Clinton was met by Tatarstan’s longtime president, Mintimer S. Shaimiev, who showed her around a mosque and an Orthodox cathedral, both of which are within the walls of Kazan’s version of the Kremlin. Mr. Shaimiev is no democrat, but he played up his ecumenical credentials.

“This is a multiethnic place,” he told her as she gazed at a shimmering chandelier in the mosque. “There are plenty of mixed marriages.”

Mrs. Clinton praised Mr. Shaimiev for being “someone who is well known for fostering religious tolerance.”

The three-hour side trip to Tatarstan captured the ambitions and limitations of Mrs. Clinton’s approach to being secretary of state, nine months into her tenure. It was driven, her aides say, by her desire to get out of capital cities, to places where she could mingle with people.

But the stop in Kazan had a rushed feel to it, and Mrs. Clinton has little time these days for even brief forays. Minutes after her plane took off from Kazan, she holed up in her cabin to take part, by secure telephone link, in the White House’s latest meeting on Afghanistan.

Mrs. Clinton has managed to keep encounters with students on her schedule. Her talk in Moscow drew noisy applause, and she was asked questions about issues like the American role in the global economic crisis and the dispute between the United States and Russia over Georgia.
Asked to name the book that had made the biggest impact on her, she singled out “The Brothers Karamazov.” The parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s novel, she said, speaks to the dangers of certitude.

“For a lot of reasons, that was an important part of my thinking,” Mrs. Clinton said. “One of the greatest threats we face is from people who believe they are absolutely, certainly right about everything.”

From there, it was a short rhetorical leap for Mrs. Clinton to encourage Russia to open its political system.

She even struck an implicit blow for diversity when she cut the ribbon on a statue of the poet Walt Whitman at the university. Local gay activists protested because one of the Russian officials on hand to honor Whitman, a gay icon, was Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who has made hostile statements about homosexuals and banned gay pride parades in the city.

For her part, Mrs. Clinton noted that in his writing Whitman celebrated the similarities between Russians and Americans.

Yet Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis was on the new rather than the old. She told the students that they symbolized a new Russia, one that produced innovators like Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow and helped to start the Internet search giant Google. And she praised President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia for charting a vision of the country’s future based on technological innovation rather than mineral wealth.

Mrs. Clinton’s visit underscores the Obama administration’s growing attachment to Mr. Medvedev, Vladimir V. Putin’s handpicked choice to succeed him as president. Last month, the White House made much of Mr. Medvedev’s support for its tough stance toward Iran.

After Mrs. Clinton’s meeting on Tuesday with the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in which he ruled out threatening Iran with sanctions, she went to see Mr. Medvedev at his dacha outside Moscow. American officials said that Mr. Medvedev was unstinting in his support for the administration.

But on a visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Mr. Putin told reporters that he believed that it was too early to consider tough sanctions against Iran, suggesting that threats would poison negotiations.

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Russian gays express disappointment in Clinton

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Russian gays express disappointment in Clinton

By BEN JUDAH (AP) – 7 hours ago

MOSCOW — Russia's leading gay activist said Wednesday that he was disappointed that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with an outspoken foe of gay rights during her two-day trip to Russia and did not decry homophobia in the country.

Clinton attended a ceremony unveiling a statue of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Russian officials including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they "can be described in no other way than as satanic."

Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and U.S. gay activists have claimed him as symbol of their movement.
"Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry we are resetting our relations for the 21st century," Clinton said. A statue of the revered Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was erected at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., in 2000.

Luzhkov also compared Whitman to "our Alexander Pushkin" — but said he was quintessentially American.

"Whitman's poetry is imbued with the spirit of American optimism, the desire to create," Luzhkov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "Whitman did not accept the standards of poetry — he was an innovator."

It was not clear whether Luzhkov was aware of Whitman's status as a gay icon, and sponsors of the statue said they were honoring Whitman strictly for his contributions to literature.

"Whitman transcended his sexuality in his art and I would like to thank Mayor Luzhkov for welcoming him in his city and have absolutely nothing to say about those things," said James W. Symington, a former four-time congressman for Missouri and representative of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation.

Gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev said Wednesday he was disappointed Clinton did not discuss discrimination against gays.

"Russia is supposed to be a democracy and she said nothing," he said.

Alexeyev had called on Clinton to denounce what he called entrenched and degrading homophobic attitudes in Russia at a news conference Tuesday.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said the department was unaware of any request from the Russian gay community.

Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Russia in 1993 and homophobic attitudes remain widespread.

Activists have taken the struggle to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow to the European Court of Justice, which is scheduled to rule on the issue in early 2010.

The statue of Walt Whitman was placed in the gardens of Moscow State University, where in May more than 30 gay activists were arrested for attempting to hold a pride march.

The statue of Walt Whitman will complement a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin installed in Washington in 2000.

Whitman sculptor Alexander Bourganov remarked at a press conference Tuesday that the opening had been delayed and been politically difficult. He did not elaborate.

Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Clinton leaves Russia with appeal for cooperation

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Clinton leaves Russia with appeal for cooperation

By MATTHEW LEE (AP) – 8 hours ago

KAZAN, Russia — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged Russians to open up their political system, embrace diversity and scorn Cold War-era thinking.
In Moscow and Kazan, the capital of Russia's religiously and ethnically diverse republic of Tatarstan, Clinton underscored to audiences at elite universities the Obama administration's desire to "reset" relations with Russia.

"We have people in our government and you have people in your government who are still living in the past," she told a crowd of about 2,000 students at Moscow State University. "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," she said.

Though she seemed to cast blame equally, Clinton took particular aim at Russian suspicions toward improved ties and the influence of U.S. policies and Western values.

"The more open that Russia can become, the more Russia will contribute," she said. "The more active and dynamic the political system you have, the more ... ideas will go into the mix and out of it will come even better answers to the problems that we all face."

The comments came a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov objected to the Obama administration's strategy of publicly threatening Iran with more sanctions to get it to come clean about its suspect nuclear program.

At a news conference with Clinton on Tuesday, Lavrov said that while more sanctions might eventually be needed, talking about them or other penalties now is "counterproductive." The U.S. believes Iran will respond only if confronted by a unified position.

Although Clinton and top aides maintained that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had assured them Russia would support sanctions if Iran did not comply, Lavrov's comment exposed a rift in tactics between the two countries that could be exploited by Iran.

She glossed over Iran in her Wednesday comments but aides said they remained surprised by Lavrov's remark, which came as the U.S. tries to rally international opinion in favor of sanctions against Iran if needed. Lavrov is closely associated with Russia's old guard.

Instead, standing in front of a monumental Soviet mosaic topped by a red hammer and sickle at Moscow State's main auditorium, Clinton made an appeal for a new U.S.-Russian partnership that would extend from the political to the personal.

"I choose partnership and I choose to put aside being a child of the Cold War," she intoned. "I choose to move beyond the rhetoric and the propaganda that came from my government and yours. I choose a different future and that's a choice every one of us can make every single day."
Clinton is the first secretary of state ever to visit Kazan, which bills itself as Russia's third capital, and Tatarstan, an oil-rich moderate Muslim-majority republic that is often hailed as a model of multicultural tolerance.

There, she visited a mosque and nearby Orthodox cathedral, before speaking to students at Kazan State University, where Lenin once studied. She urged them to carry on the republic's tradition of ethnic and religious inclusion and equality.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.