by By SARAH BAXTER & MARK FRANCHETTI | |
| THE German resort of Heiligendamm played host to Hitler and Mussolini before it became trapped behind the Iron Curtain. As members of the G8 head for the Baltic coast this week, the summit threatens to become a flashpoint for a new cold war between Russia and the West. | |
| Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has already accused America of seeking to rule by “diktat as in the Third Reich” over its plan to deploy an anti-missile shield in eastern Europe, while Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, chided Russia last week for acting in the “zero-sum terms of another era” -- a reference to the cold war. The stand-off with Russia is likely to overshadow the summit’s official agenda, including the search for a consensus on climate change. President George W. Bush is to make a point of stopping over in Poland and the Czech Republic, where 10 American interceptor rockets are likely to be sited. “This is not an issue over which Russia is prepared to soften its stance,” an aide to Putin said. “We’re dead against the American plans because we’re convinced the shield will dramatically alter the military balance of power in Europe.” Last week Russia test-fired a new ballistic missile designed to challenge the anti-missile shield and usher in an arsenal of post-Soviet era weapons. Bush will join Putin for a one-on-one session in Heiligendamm before the two men meet again in a month’s time at the Bush family holiday home in Kennebunkport, Maine. “It is true, the rhetoric has seemed to escalate a little bit in the past several months,” said Stephen Hadley, the US national security adviser. “Our view is we ought to be trying to turn that rhetoric down.” Russia has been picking fights with much of Europe as well as America recently, from the refusal to allow the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi to Britain for the alleged murder of the Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, to the denial of independence for Kosovo. “We used to think the Russians were not comfortable being isolated, but that is no longer the case,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “Regarding Kosovo, they are perfectly happy to go it alone.” In Heiligendamm the Russians will be facing a revitalized western alliance composed of the new conservative French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, known as “L’americain,” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who chided Putin for his poor human rights record at a recent European Union summit, and Bush. The American president will attend bilateral meetings with Tony Blair, in his farewell G8 appearance, and with Sarkozy -- the first time the two will have met. Sarkozy shares Bush’s teetotalism and passion for cycling, and the chemistry is described on both sides as extremely promising. Europe remains at odds with America over climate change, despite a compromise measure proposed last week by Bush in advance of the summit. The Germans want to cut greenhouse emissions to 50 percent of the 1990 level by 2050, in the hope of limiting any rise in the planet’s temperature this century to 2 degrees Celsius. Bush put forward a counter-plan of his own which calls on the world’s top-polluting countries, including China and India, to agree on a target for reducing greenhouse gases by the end of 2008. “It is not a competitor to anybody’s proposal,” Hadley said. “It is an effort to make a contribution to ongoing dialogue.” The proposal has removed some of the sting from America’s refusal to sign the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change, although in America it is being greeted as more of a U-turn than it is in Europe. Bush is facing increasing domestic pressure to adjust his policy from “green” evangelical Christians, security hawks who want to reduce American dependence on Middle Eastern oil and businesspeople, including Hank Paulson, his treasury secretary. Roger Bate, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said: “Regardless of past guilt, the Kyoto protocol dealt only with the wealthiest nations and they failed to comply with its targets. Bush has now said, ‘Let’s play your game. Let’s see what will happen if we set targets for developing nations that will help them to lower their emissions’.” But Bush went on to reject plans for a global carbon-trading scheme, which would allow nations to buy and sell carbon credits. US officials also ruled out energy efficiency targets, supported by Europe but regarded as unwieldy by American businesses. The Europeans are posturing, according to Bate. “Unless you massively increase the price of energy to consumers, you will not have a significant reduction in energy use. You won’t see how serious voters are about global warming until middling-to-poor people start giving up their summer holidays because of the prohibitive cost of air travel and have to turn their heating down in winter to save money.” There is scope for progress at the summit on Iran, where the Russians have been drawing closer to the European and American position and may ultimately support tougher sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program. “It is the one issue where the Russians are still unwilling to be isolated,” said Sestanovich. “They don’t want to be seen as the sponsors of the Iranian nuclear bomb. It is bad PR.” | |
04.06.2007 | |
| © The Sunday Times, London |
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