The US will use the forthcoming meeting on the sidelines of UN General Assembly in New York between the Russian and US presidents, Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama, to fix its losing position in the Middle East. Russia, in its turn, welcomes the desire of the US to "unfreeze" diplomatic contacts at the highest level, Russian senators and experts told Vestnik Kavkaza.
Thus, the First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, a representative of the legislative body of the Jewish Autonomous Region, Vladimir Dzhabarov, drew attention to the fact that Barack Obama himself proposed a meeting.
"The initiative of the US shows that it understands that the Russian Federation is not a regional power, but a superpower, and no major conflict can be solved without it. Of course, it is unlikely that the character of our relations will change dramatically for the better, but the resumption of contacts will cause the ice to melt gradually," the senator noted.
According to the First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, the importance of this meeting is very high. At the same time, Vladimir Jabbarov emphasized that for Obama it is important to be a cause of positive memories. "If he wants to leave the government as not a person whose actions have led to many conflicts, but as a peacemaker and Nobel Peace Prize winner, it is very important to complete the presidential term having good relations with the Russian president," he explained.
Jabbarov added that for Russia this meeting is an opportunity to realize its international interests. "Russia wants only the preservation of peace in all parts of the world," the First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs concluded.
A member of the Federation Council Committee for International Affairs, a representative of the executive body of state power of the Ryazan Region, Igor Morozov, expects that the US will ask Russia to help at the meeting of Putin and Obama. "One of the key issues is the Syrian issue, in which the United States has arrived at a critical point. Russia is helping the government of Syria to suppress IS, while the United States, carrying out aerial bombings of the IS, put the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad as the main task," the senator noted.
According to him, the US statement about the Ukrainian agenda of the meeting is a cover for the Syrian issue. "The White House said that Ukraine and the Minsk Agreements would be the main issue for Obama. I think that the US diplomacy playing on the priorities is wishful thinking," Morozov said.
He agreed that Obama needs to demonstrate the positive results of his foreign policy activities as he leaves the US presidency. "He must win during the fight against IS and this is possible only through cooperation with the Russian coalition. Therefore, the US has to negotiate if it wants to achieve success in Syria," the member of the Federation Council Committee for International Affairs stressed.
The senator added that Russia welcomes the US desire to return to high-level contacts.
The head of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Academy of Sciences of Russia, Sergei Oznobishchev, said that "there is a domestic political sense"."Obama needs to demonstrate that there is a dialogue, which is a consequence of his personal policy, and that as a result of this dialogue with Russia there is a certain 'correction' of Russian policies," the expert pointed out.
The second point is the need to agree on the joint fight against international terrorism. "There is a need to coordinate efforts in the fight against IS. Russia is determined to work together with Syria, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, while the United States is accustomed to be the leading country in the fight against terror. On our side, we say that we will discuss international terrorism and if we have enough time we will raise the Ukrainian issue. And the US says that it will discuss the peace process in Ukraine first," Oznobischev noted.
