MUNICH (AP) – The leaders of Russia and Germany are being joined by new U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the annual Munich security conference this weekend – and the prestigious gathering has gained extra spice from a last-minute announcement that Iran’s top nuclear negotiator will attend.
Besides Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, more than 40 foreign and defense ministers were arriving Friday for the event, where the main theme this year is “global crises and global responsibilities.”
The event promises a particular focus on NATO’s role, with other topics including the Middle East peace process, the West’s relations with Russia and the fight against terrorism.
Possible developments in diplomacy over Iran’s disputed nuclear program were propelled onto the agenda when Ali Larijani, Iran’s main nuclear negotiator, said earlier this week that he intended to hold negotiations on the sidelines of the conference.
It would be Larijani’s first meeting with Western officials since the United Nations imposed limited sanctions on Iran in December over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
On Wednesday, Larijani sidestepped questions on whether his talks would directly involve U.S. representatives. He had previously said he would not meet with Americans.
Now in its 43rd year, the Munich Conference on Security Policy is favored by top policy-makers and experts as a chance to exchange ideas, much of the work being done in the hallways of the posh Hotel Bayerischer Hof, a more relaxed setting than formal international meetings.
Some 3,500 police will be on hand to provide tight security for the conference and keep the usual throng of demonstrators away. This year, “several thousand” protesters are expected, said Claus Schreer, a protest organizer.
Under former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the forum at times saw trans-Atlantic tension. At the conference in 2003, the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made an impassioned speech attacking U.S. preparations to invade Iraq; the following year, the Germans and French rejected a U.S. call for NATO troops in Iraq.
The U.S. and Germany are enjoying warmer relations after 15 months of Merkel, who used her appearance at last year’s Munich conference to stress that NATO should remain the “primary forum” for trans-Atlantic security.
Other participants this year include Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
With both Putin and Ivanov present, Russia’s international role will also be a prominent focus, conference organizer Horst Teltschik said.
“Putin comes at a strategically important time,” Teltschik told the Muenchner Merkur newspaper.
“The European Union wants to negotiate a new agreement with Russia. Germany and Russia recognize each other as strategic partners. Moscow is prepared to take on responsibility for central questions, for example regarding solving the atomic conflicts with Iran and North Korea. I’m expecting from Putin a keynote address over Russia’s central foreign policy interests.”
With leaders like Yushchenko and Ilves on hand, whose countries have recently been at odds with Russia, plus U.S. Senator John McCain – who was sharply critical of Putin’s government at last year’s conference – there is also the potential for fireworks.
Already, Ivanov has taken a shot at the U.S. administration’s plan to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe, probably Poland and the Czech Republic.
“The building of parts of a missile defense system near the Russian border is an unfriendly signal,” he wrote in an article for Munich’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung. “It harms the relations between Russia and the USA, Russia and the NATO states as well as Russia and Poland.”
In a parallel opinion piece in the same newspaper, McCain criticized Russia’s decision to temporarily cut off fuel deliveries to Western Europe in January over a dispute with Belarus, and suggested Moscow was taking advantage of instability in the former Soviet satellites “to exert its unhealthy and often imperialistic influence on neighbor states.”
