Is Moscow’s main bête noire becoming Washington’s darling again?
A trip to the US for the January 13 memorial service for diplomat Richard Holbrooke has given Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili the chance to score a second tête-à-tête with US President Barack Obama in the space of two months. The first, in November, took place on the sidelines of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lisbon.
After all the talk of Obama keeping Saakashvili at arm’s length lest he spoil the whole US-Russia restart campaign, every interaction between Obama and Saakashvili is closely watched both in Georgia and in Russia.
There could be more conversations to scrutinize: Saakashvili’s press office claims that the Georgian leader and Obama also agreed to set up a broader meeting in the future.
Not surprisingly, the Russian interpretation of these exchanges differs strongly from the Georgian.
To hear the Russian press (and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin) tell it, Saakashvili used his time in Washington to pull aside top US officials and ask them to rearm Georgia. The Georgian Foreign Ministry denied such reports, saying that Obama and Saakashvili spoke about economic assistance, trade and security, as well as Georgia’s contribution to NATO's Afghanistan campaign.
Similarly, the Pentagon avidly denied any talks about arms sales, while the White House did not comment on the issue, The Washington Post reported.
But perhaps it's more than alleged arms sales that has Putin and his press pals in a huff. The sheer fact that Saakashvili is again rubbing shoulders with an American president, vice-president and other senior political figures suggests that post-war Tbilisi has outmaneuvered Moscow on the PR front. That alone is enough to rub the Kremlin the wrong way.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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