President of Russia Vladimir Putin (center), Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Shroeder (right) and President of France Jacques Chirac (left) begin their cautious approach to the press conference.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Internal Affairs Summit
// How Russia, Germany and France protected themselves from Poland and Lithuania
Friendship of Nations
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with French president Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Kaliningrad on Sunday. Together, they heard themselves called history's losers and together they disagreed. In the opinion of Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov, their objections were unsuccessful too.
Schroeder arrived in Kaliningrad first. Putin met him at Svetlogorsk, a local resort (of national importance, the locals are quick to mention). They drank coffee as they waited for Chirac. Then the three leaders negotiated for more than two hours. At the press conference afterwards, all three of them looked self-assured ready to meet other self-assured leaders in Edinburgh soon.
Putin and Chirac talked about reforming the UN and Schroeder thanked Putin for the invitation to the city with such a complex history. His voice became suddenly unsteady.
“You will understand,” he said, “that an invitation at this time and for this purpose is touching to me.”
He started it, as they say, and they couldn't have avoided the delicate subject in any case.
"It is touching for me and for many other people who have fond memories of Koenigsberg… And not only fond memories, but also terrible memories of the Nazi years… For them, the 750th anniversary of Koenigsberg is a kind of holiday… Yes, the city is called Kaliningrad, I know…"
The chancellor's words seemed inconsistent. The normally calm and friendly man was worried.
“But that does not concern the territorial problem at all,” he continued. “The territorial problem does not matter here! But, for many people, this city was and will always be Koenigsberg.”
The chancellor looked defenseless as he was forced to say something that would perk up one nation without offending the other.
Putin calmly talked about the “eight,” which he is planning to host in Russia next year. Energy security will be the main theme then.
They talk about energy security when there is energy insecurity. Putin, as he named that as the main topic of the G8 meeting in St. Petersburg, understood that both possibilities were in his hands.
He was asked why he denounced the treaty with Estonia and why the heads of Lithuania and Poland had not been invited to Kaliningrad.
“They did not deuce the treaty because we did not ratify it,” Putin answered. “We cancelled Russia's signature on the treaty. We consider any legal grounds for territorial claims absolutely unacceptable. We consider the revision of borders absolutely unacceptable. The references by the Estonian parliament to the treaty of 1920 create the prerequisites for such a revision.”
Putin was, of course, ready for that question, and for the next. He probably decided to tackle all the sticky issues at once so as not to take more such questions from the enemies of Russian democracy.
“As for offence,” he continued, “I think that it is a journalistic invention. We will make this holiday an internal affair. If we had invited the leaders of Poland and Lithuania, it would have been a diplomatic innovation.”
That might have looked like the end of the delicate subject of relations with the Baltic countries and Poland (which leave much to be desired, to put it mildly), but that would be fooling ourselves.
After a halfhearted exchange of opinions on aid to the suffering peoples of Africa, I reporter from German ZDF television was called on. He asked Putin if Kaliningrad would seek aid from its chief neighbor (that's Germany) and what the summit participants intended to do to overcome the crisis in the European Union.
Putin began to say that Kaliningrad Region was full of businesses with complete German control, when Schroeder literally interrupted him.
“Yes, we have a crisis,” Schroeder said. “It concerns the constitution of the EU, but Mr. Putin has nothing to do with those problems. Let's not dump that on him too!”
Having clearly failed to bring the situation under control, Schroeder went to Putin's defense in the matters of ten minutes earlier.
“If the Russian president invited whom he will to this anniversary, I should not ad will not comment on it!” he added.
At least he said the president invited him to the anniversary of Kaliningrad-Koenigsberg. But that contradicted Putin's statement that the anniversary was an internal affair of the Russians.
Seeing that his colleagues were getting confused, the president of France came to their aid.
“I don't understand what is being said at all!” Chirac exclaimed. “We met in Kaliningrad – Vladimir Putin, the chancellor and I. President Putin took the opportunity to show us the city, but I don't understand it when they say that someone was not invited. This is a trilateral meting! The Russian president chose Kaliningrad for a trilateral meeting!”
Now Chirac began agitated as well, seeing that he did not look too good, even compared with the other leaders.
Everyone could see tat it was no coincidence that the three heads of state met in Kaliningrad exactly at the time of its 750th anniversary. It would have been easier to admit that Putin wanted to invite Schroeder and didn't want to invite Alexander Kwasniewski. As Schroeder's diplomatic escort in the absence of the Lithuanian and Polish presidents, Chirac was playing an unenviable role. In his heart of hearts, Chirac could not have not understood that and suffered because of it.
“And I also don't think that anybody should make any comments!” he interrupted himself to add.
Then Putin made his bid to save the situation, telling a long story about how the trilateral efforts of the leaders of France, Germany and Russia benefited their respective peoples.
People were starting to get doze. Another German reporter, this one from Der Spiegel, asked a rather long question:
“You tried to prevent the war in Iraq. And you couldn't. Two of you tried to strengthen European integration. It failed. Your political futures are in question. How do you feel about the fact that they already consider you history's losers?”
“You think that, if our soldiers are not dying in Iraq, we have lost?” Putin responded caustically. After along pause, during which his question was not answered, he continued. “I don't think so. I suggest that we do not speak about the past at all, but simply look to the future.”
That really is simpler.
“Not participating in the war cannot be seen as a defeat,” Schroeder added in a hurry.
He was, of course, glad to latch on to the first discrepancy n the question and ignore its intent. The journalist must have been talking about the voters' disappointment in their leaders and the approaching parliamentary elections in Germany and presidential elections in France and Russia.
“All of European history is overcoming crises,” added Chirac. “We will overcome this too.”
“If the president of France and I are fighting for the idea of the European Union, then it is senseless to say that we have been defeated,” Schroeder said in support. “But it is your right to do so.”
The journalist did not reply, and the sensitive president of France, who obviously was unable to force himself to pretend that the journalist's question had been answered in full, grumbled into the microphone, “I thought, by the way, that we did not answer the question that had been addressed to us.”
But instead of answering then, he called an ending to the press conference and warmly said goodbye to the journalists.
When everyone was already standing, Putin, also seeing that the press conference had gone badly, spoke loudly to the backs of the reporters. “Let me add,” he said, “that Russia was recently unanimously accepted as a member of the Islamic Conference organization. I hope that we will be able to make a positive contribution to the solution of the solution in Iraq from that position.”
And things were even worse.
Andrey Kolesnikov, Kaliningrad
All the Article in Russian as of July 04, 2005
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