Obama, Putin to meet at a defining moment – Indian Punchline
By M K Bhadrakumar – September 24, 2015
▻http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2015/09/24/obama-putin-to-meet-at-a-defining-moment
The Russian state agency TASS is not given to speculating on the Kremlin leader’s activities. It is a ground rule set by Joseph Stalin when the agency was created in 1925. Therefore, we must accept as ‘breaking news’ the TASS’ Washington dateline report quoting ‘an informed source’ to the effect that a meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US resident Barack Obama will take place next week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session.
Putin is taking to the podium in New York after a gap of a decade when he addresses the GA session on Monday. This is brilliant news. The time is overdue for the American and Russian leaderships to candidly discuss the issues of international security, especially the fight against the Islamic State and the conflict in Syria. There is good reason to believe that the gap between the US and Russian thinking on Syria is dramatically narrowing.
If, in the process, Obama and Putin agree to explore the new frontiers of a Russian-American reset, that will be a bonus, too. For Obama, most certainly, this fortnight will be incomplete without a meeting with Putin. The conversation with Pope Francis on Wednesday would have reminded Obama what a hopelessly disjointed moral landscape surrounds us all – poignantly symbolized by the dead body of 3-year old Aylan washed ashore unnoticed on a desolate Turkish beach – and, indeed, it has ultimately come to be Obama’s own presidential legacy — and he can’t easily escape from it.
Equally, his summit on Friday with the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping will alert Obama that Washington can optimally cope with China’s rise only through a far-sighted strategy that provides for the underpinning of a durable, predictable partnership with Moscow in the Asia-Pacific. (By the way, isn’t it a delightful coincidence that TASS let the cat out of the bag on the eve of Xi’s touchdown on the White House lawns?)
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