Moscow Denies It Opposed Bush’s Visit to Latvia and Georgia

The Russian Foreign Ministry denied reports by The New York Times that Moscow was against the U.S. President’s visit to Latvia and Georgia.

The New York Times reported on May 6 that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice protesting President Bush’s plans to visit the two former Soviet states.

“First, no letter was sent [to the U.S. Secretary of State]. Sergey Lavrov talked [with Condoleezza Rice] in frames of a regular exchange of views with the Department of States. Secondly, it [the conversation] was based on the United States’ sovereign right to have its foreign relations in accordance with its own consideration. [These talks between Lavrov and Rice] aimed at only one purpose: to figure out a context for the frames in which this visit [of George W. Bush] will take place,” Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman said in an information note issued on May 6.

He also said that Sergey Lavrov talked with Condoleezza Rice on the phone on May 6 and the latter agreed that, as Yakovenko put it, “there was an absolutely normal exchange of views over George Bush’s visit to Latvia and Georgia and that there was nothing in that conversation that could have upset the American side.”

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)