Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Singapore. Obama will travel to China today. See his travel schedule here.
“I have found, as always, President Medvedev frank, constructive and thoughtful,” Mr. Obama said after the meeting.
“The reset button has worked,” he added, alluding to the administration’s early promise to “reset” the bilateral relationship after several years of bickering over a variety of issues from missile defense to Kosovo.
With the START treaty set to expire soon, the Obama administration is searching for ways to have weapons inspectors remain in Russia to keep American eyes on the world’s second most formidable nuclear arsenal. In the absence of a treaty or a legally binding “bridge” authority, American inspectors would be forced to leave Russia when the treaty expires. Likewise, Russian inspectors would have to leave the United States.
Under START provisions, both nations are allowed a maximum of 30 inspectors to monitor each other’s compliance with the treaty.
On Iran, administration officials said, Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev discussed a timetable for imposing sanctions if Tehran and the West do not soon agree on a proposal in which Iran would send its enriched uranium out of the country, either for either temporary safekeeping or reprocessing into fuel rods.
“Unfortunately, so far at least, Iran appears to have been unable to say yes to what everyone acknowledges is a creative and constructive approach,” said Mr. Obama, sitting next to Mr. Medvedev. “We are running out of time with respect to that approach.”
Mr. Medvedev also alluded to running out of patience. He said that while a dialogue with Iran was continuing, “we are not completely happy about its pace. If something does not work there are other means to move the process further.” more at the NYT
Robert Gibbs' press briefing on the meeting:
Press Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the APEC Summit and the President's Bilateral Meeting with President Medvedev
Filing Center, Swishotel, Singapore
PRESS BRIEFING BY WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR RUSSIA MIKE MCFAUL, AND DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS BEN RHODES, ON THE APEC SUMMIT AND THE PRESIDENT'S BILATERAL MEETING WITH PRESIDENT MEDVEDEV
4:27 P.M. SGT
MR. GIBBS: We're going to do this rather quickly because the President is running -- Helene, you looked awfully disappointed when I said we were going to do this quickly.
Q No, I didn't see you come in.
MR. GIBBS: Oh, okay. It's the voice of -- never mind. We're going to do this rather quickly; the motorcade is going to leave rather shortly. The President is a tad behind schedule. So I'm going to bring up Mike McFaul and Ben Rhodes to answer some questions. Mike will give us a quick readout, much of which you heard from the two Presidents a few moments ago.
The only thing that I would add to what has happened thus far today -- the President was just, as you know, in the scheduled meeting with the 10 ASEAN nations and brought up in the meeting the -- reiterated exactly what he said yesterday in Tokyo about the release of Aung San Suu Kyi by Burma. So he brought that up directly with that government.
So we'll give this over to Mike.
MR. McFAUL: Thanks, Robert. I'll be brief. Today the Presidents met for the fourth time. The subject matter, as they expressed at the end of the meeting, was the START treaty -- the new START treaty, Iran, and a few other issues -- a little bit on Afghanistan and some other economic issues.
On the new START treaty, we progressed. We talked about some sticky issues that still have to be resolved. And both Presidents committed to trying to get a new treaty in place by the end of the year. And they said that publicly and that was a big part of the discussion on the substance of that treaty.
Second, we talked about Iran, again, as we do at every meeting that we've had with President Medvedev. And again, as they said publicly, what they discussed privately, we had a very constructive relationship with the Russians in terms of the offer that we had on the Tehran research reactor. We worked very closely with them in all aspects of that deal. And time is running out, as the President said and as President Medvedev also affirmed, in terms of -- the offer has been on the table and we have to consider other measures and other ways to go if the Iranians are not going to be serious about the diplomatic path.
And then we discussed Afghanistan briefly. The President just informed President Medvedev about the review and told him that once we have our review done, that he'll debrief him through either his government or him personally.
MR. GIBBS: Any questions for Mike? Yes, sir.
Q I have two. On START, the commitment is to have it in place by the end of December, but doesn’t it expire in mid-December?
MR. McFAUL: Yes, it does expire on December 5th. And in parallel, we have a bridging agreement that we also are working with the Russians. I fully suspect we'll be able to get that in place by December 5th.
Q You're definitely not going to make the December 5th deadline, though?
MR. McFAUL: Well, I don't know that for sure, but what I do know for sure is that we won't have a ratified treaty in place by December 5th. That has to go through our Senate, through their Duma. So that is for sure we do need a bridging agreement no matter what. Read the rest here
