Americas...:Obama Cancels Meeting with Putin over Snowden Fi...

Home
- Middle East
  - Lebanon
  - Syria
  - Bahrain
  - Palestine
  - Zionist Entity
  - Yemen
  - Saudi Arabia
  - Iraq
  - More from Middle East
- Americas
- Asia-Pacific
  - Iran
  - Pakistan
  - Afghanistan
  - Koreas
  - India
  - China
  - More from Asian States
- Africa
  - Sudan
  - Egypt
  - Libya
  - Tunisia
  - Algeria
  - More from Africa
- Europe
  - United Kingdom
  - Russia
  - Turkey
  - France
  - Germany
  - Spain
  - Greece
  - Italy
  - More from Europe
ISLAMIC RESISTANCE
SECRETARY-GENERAL
Voices
Ten Day Dawn
The Biggest Crime
Martyr Leaders

Obama Cancels Meeting with Putin over Snowden File

Local Editor

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday canceled a Moscow summit with President Vladimir Putin planned for next month in response to Russia granting a one-year asylum to former CIA contractor Edward Snowden.

"Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a US-Russia summit in early September," White House spokesman Jay Carney mentioned in a statement.

For its part, the Russian government expressed disappointment at the move, which means Obama will skip Moscow talks with Putin but still attend a G20 summit in St. Petersburg September 5-6.

"It is clear that the decision is due to the situation around the former US special services employee Snowden, which we did not create," Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters in Moscow.

Besides the Snowden issue, the US and Russia don't exactly see eye-to-eye due to the latter's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regarding the war in Syria.

"The real issue here is that the US-Russian relationship has been adrift since 2011," Andrew Weiss, a Russian expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Reuters. "Snowden is the obvious sore point and source of great public attention. But the relationship has been sagging and unmoored for some time now."

Obama's decision of cancelling the one-on-one summit came only three days after he confirmed his trip to Moscow for the G20 summit in an interview on Monday on NBC's "Tonight" show.

However, the President had expressed his disappointment at Moscow, saying, "There have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality."

Source: News Agencies, edited by website team