President Bush to Discuss Missile Defense in Russia

President Bush

March 27, 2008

Excerpts from The President's Foreign Print Media Roundtable:

... President Putin has invited me to go to Sochi.  And it's to discuss the strategic agreement, the crucial part of which is missile defense.

    Condi Rice and Bob Gates had a good visit with the President and counterparts on this very issue -- and hopefully, that we can advance our dialogue so, at some point in time, we can reach an agreement on these important matters:  Proliferation matters -- I know we've got agreement on Iran, and that is that Iran should not have the capacity to enrich, and that I supported the Russian efforts to convince the Iranians that they didn't need to learn how to enrich because he -- Putin -- was willing to provide enriched uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant.  Therefore, no need to enrich, which I thought was a smart move and supported...

    In other words, there's an invitation out there, and this is really -- the way to look at this is a follow-up to Condi and Bob Gates's meeting --   which is good.  Romania and other nations would hope that the United States would have good relations with Russia, and it's important that we have good relations with Russia, we can find common interests.

    On the other hand, there are areas where we have been able to be in a position where I've expressed my disagreements with President Putin on different matters related to their democracy.  And my strategy all along is to keep relations such that he will actually listen to what I have to say.  So when you hear people say, "George Bush has got good relations with Vladimir Putin," there's a reason why.  Because if you're -- in order to have somebody listen to you, they got to at least have an open mind, and it's hard to have an open mind if the only thing you're doing is try to blast away on a regular basis about your disagreements publicly.  I've chosen not to do that.

    Therefore, I'm optimistic we can reach accord on very important matters.  I think a lot of people in Europe would have a deep sigh of relief if we're able to reach an accord on missile defense.  And hopefully we can.  One of the things that, hopefully, is clear to the Russian side is that this system is not aimed at Russia.  After all, it doesn't take many missiles to overwhelm the kind of system we're talking about.  And Russia has got plenty of missiles if they want to overwhelm.  This is really aimed at -- a potential missile launch, for example, out of the Middle East.  And therefore, I think it makes sense for us to be able to be in a position if people so choose to share information, and fully understand the operational activities of a system so as to build confidence.