Medvedev Stated that 'Russia has no anti-Americanism"

Medvedev, in Washington to attend the global economic summit, seemed to enjoy the sparring with an audience of foreign policy elites that included former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who led the questioning.

He seemed to back away from what was widely seen here as a brusque warning to Obama, just after the U.S. election, to not proceed with U.S. plans for a missile defense program in Europe."We will not do anything until America makes the first step," Medvedev said. "If the step is so unfortunate as it is envisaged today, we will have to act. But to my mind we have good opportunities to solve this problem . . . to agree either on a global system of protection against rogue states . . . or to find ways out in terms of programs existing already.

"I am ready to discuss it, and hopefully a new president and new administration will have a willingness to discuss this matter," he went on. "At least the first signals we got demonstrate that our partners really think about this problem and not just rubber-stamp this problem."
While there was no discussion of Russia's authoritarianism and crackdown on internal dissent in recent years, Medvedev did address a domestic issue when he spoke of his desire to more forcefully clean up corruption in his government. "Business people have to pay bribes. Bureaucrats accept bribes, and this has repercussions for the business climate," he said, promising "to act" to deal with it.

The Russian president also showed an American politician's propensity not to let certain matters drop, for fear of leaving the wrong impression. After Medvedev described Russia's position on missile defense, Albright said she appreciated the explanation, saying it appeared to be more balanced than Medvedev's Nov. 5 speech, which she said contained "elements of anti-Americanism."

The questioning moved on to a different subject, but when it came his time to answer, Medvedev indicated that he did not like Albright's assertion. "In my state of the nation address, I mentioned that Russia has no anti-Americanism, but there are some difficulties in understanding each other," he said. "We would like to overcome this with the new administration."

He said his Nov. 5 speech was not "blackmail" aimed at pressuring Obama. He explained that he had planned to give a major state of the nation speech for some time and that he had twice canceled scheduled addresses because he was unhappy with the drafts. When the speech was finally to his satisfaction, he did not recognize that the new date for delivering it was the day after the U.S. election. "There was nothing personal," he said.

Indeed, Medvedev voiced enthusiasm for working with the new administration, saying he looks forward to meeting Obama soon after the inauguration. He added that he thinks there is "a great opportunity to restore relations to the fullest extent."