Rice to Make Surprise Visit to Moscow

MosNews
Oct. 14, 2005

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will arrive in Moscow on a surprise visit Friday to meet Vladimir Putin. She is also set to meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“She will meet President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,” her spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters after she had arrived in the French capital from Tajikistan. Rice was to meet French President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy earlier Friday before leaving for Moscow in the afternoon, the Reuters news agency reported.

Rice was to meet French President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy earlier Friday before leaving for Moscow in the afternoon.

On Saturday she will fly to London for dinner and talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and early Sunday will meet Prime Minister Tony Blair at his official country residence near London.

Rice, who has just finished a tour of Central Asia, intends to discuss the situation in Lebanon, multilateral talks on Iran’s nuclear program, the ongoing campaign in Iraq and Israel-Palestinian negotiations during her visits to France, Russia and Britain. There are several key international meetings on these subjects before the end of the year.

Rice said Thursday that Central Asia’s economic development must go hand in hand with more democratization. “Political and economical freedom must go together and complete each other,” she said in a speech at the Eurasian University of Astana, on the second day of a visit to Kazakhstan.

Rice called US-Kazakh relations “excellent” in the fight against terrorism. Kazakhstan is a U.S. ally in the region, opening its air space to coalition planes used in Afghanistan in 2001 to overthrow the Taliban regime and also sending a small contingent of some 40 soldiers to Iraq.

She later flew on to Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, for talks with President Emomali Rakhmonov, another regional leader criticised for repression of media and human rights.

Last week the U.S. embassy in Dushanbe expressed concern after the head of a leading opposition party, Makhmadruzi Iskandarov, was sentenced to 23 years in prison on terrorism and embezzlement charges in a ruling government critics said was politically motivated.

On her Central Asian tour, Rice also visited Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday, where she obtained assurances that Washington can maintain its military base near Bishkek.