THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
July 7, 2009
BACKGROUND BRIEFING ON THE PRESIDENT’S MEETINGS WITH PRIME MINISTER PUTIN AND FORMER PRESIDENT GORBACHEV BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS
Gostinny Dvor
Moscow, Russia
1:08 P.M. (Local)
MR. HAMMER: All right, we’re doing a briefing on background with senior administration officials on this morning’s meetings with Prime Minister Putin and as well as with former President Gorbachev. We’re waiting I guess on one more person to join us. She’s rushing. All right, we’ll proceed to the first senior administration official to give you a little bit of sense of the meetings.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you. As you all know, this was the first meeting between the President and the Prime Minister. I would characterize it as a very successful meeting. It went on for at least 30 minutes beyond its allotted time.
During that time, there was a very interesting and open discussion on the -- how the relationships of our two countries evolved, particularly since the end of the Cold War. The Prime Minister was very communicative in terms of his opinions, and the President at the end of his presentation gave his views on not only where we are and how we got to where we are, but where we should go in the future.
There was a discussion on common threats, particularly related to terrorism and proliferation, and wide-ranging discussion on how other threats face our two countries, namely climate change and energy, proliferation, as I mentioned, and also the economic aspect of the world order.
So it was a very interesting morning. I think the President enjoyed it very much and they formed a basis of a good relation upon which they can build and go on from this point in future discussions and negotiations.
Do you want to add anything else?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, go ahead.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, why don’t you add in anything you have from the meeting with former President Gorbachev.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sure. So after meeting with the Prime Minister, and just to echo what my colleague said, we talked about the range of threats that the United States faces, and President Obama went through in detail the things that are of most concern to us and where we might work with Russia to address those threats.
We then after that meeting, which did go much longer, saw the former -- Mikhail Gorbachev, the former President and former General Secretary. This is the second time that President Obama has met with him now; he met with at the White House about two months ago, I believe it was.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In March.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In March, it was. And yet again, a very warm discussion, big philosophical discussion about what our countries need to do together in order to make the world a better place.
Q Can you -- two questions, please. Can you talk about -- the President said to us in an interview last week that he thought the Prime Minister had one foot in the old way of doing business and one foot in the new. What is his impression, as best you can tell, coming out of this meeting with the Prime Minister?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I think that -- I don’t want to necessarily speak for him, but my impression was that -- by virtue of the fact that the meeting ran on 30 more minutes, and this was the President’s desire to prolong the meeting just to make sure that the relationship was -- the basis for the relationship was formed and the subjects that were talked about were extremely interesting. He was clearly very much engaged. And so I think that comment is -- I would say that he’s very convinced that the Prime Minister is a man of today and has got his eyes firmly on the future, as well.
Q I’m sorry, when you say he was very much engaged, you mean President Obama?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, both -- both, I’d say.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can I add a comment on that if I may --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hold on --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can I just add one thing to this? The meeting went for two hours, I think, to be precise.
Q Total?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Total. And what I witnessed was a very frank, honest conversation about Russian national interests and American national interests. President Obama did not always agree with the logic that Prime Minister Putin laid out, and we’re not going to comment on what Mr. Putin said. There were definitely disagreements on those issues, but what was striking was that there was a clear logic -- a clear kind of definition of where we disagree. There was none of this kind of diplomatic speak about Russia versus the United States. It was, I would say, a very frank conversation about hard security interests. And we agreed on some things, as my colleague said, but we disagreed on some things, just to be clear.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think I would characterize the tone as very respectful on both sides, as well, and willing to establish the baseline for a future relationship, which is very encouraging.
Q Without saying what Prime Minister Putin said, can you give us a flavor for what the issues were that you disagreed with, and what the issues were that you did agree with?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t think I could do that quite artfully, but I would say that on the agreement -- the agreement part, the agreement seemed to be that the nature of the threats -- as I said, terrorism and proliferation -- were certainly two of the points of agreement. And we had some discussions on missile defense and how each -- how the Prime Minister and the President viewed the overall subject, and why it was important to get it right between us.
And I think there was general convergence that on these issues, that we need to work closely and relatively in the near future to get this right in our future discussions.
Q So would you characterize missile defense as something that they agreed on or something they disagreed on?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I would say that both sides explained their views as to how we got to where we are, and since there was consensual agreement on the threats that face us, missile defense kind of rolls in there as a subject that is ripe for future discussion.
MR. CHERLIN: Time for one more, guys.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can I just add to that?
Q What about Georgia and Ukraine?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can I add -- I’ll answer that, but I want to add to this, too. Just to echo what my colleague just said, it would be wrong to say they agreed or disagreed. Those are either -- those would be too simplistic. We had a long conversation about missile defense and Iran. But what we did have was a conversation where we were talking about very concrete ways in the future that we might cooperate, and that’s different. It was noted by both -- it was noted by our side that that’s a different approach to this question than before.
On Georgia, we talked about Georgia, and the President made very clear -- which he’s made very clear many, many times on the record -- we disagree about what happened there, and that exchange occurred.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’ll just add to that and say that I think both agreed that we would all try to be better listeners in the future and pay more attention to how each side is looking at the same issue through maybe a different prism. And I thought it was remarkable and very candid, very forthright. There was no defensiveness about either position. It was based on a real, genuine effort to try to understand each other’s viewpoints.
Q Anything on oil or the dollar? Did they talk about that?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, no. No.
MR. HAMMER: All right, thank you very much. We’ll have an opportunity to talk a little bit later about the rest of the day.
Q Did they relate to anything, personally? You know, Bush and Putin had that car where they were driving around together. Did they relate --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: None of that.
Q -- to anything on a personal way?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No.
Q No, all business.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: All right, thanks.
END 1:16 P.M. (Local).
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