The cancellation of President Barack Obama's visit to Moscow does not mean the end of the "reset" policy, US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak that aired on the private Dozhd TV channel.
According to the ambassador, US-Russian ties are very successful, despite recent tensions over the Syrian crisis, the situation surrounding human rights in Russia and the Edward Snowden case.
The Obama administration has already achieved a lot, McFaul believes. "Under President Obama Russia joined the World Trade Organization. Neither President Clinton, nor President Bush managed to achieve this goal, but President Obama did that," the ambassador said. "Our economic ties are developing rapidly, we successfully cooperate in various fields."
President Obama decided to cancel his visit to Moscow simply because the countries have not reached an agreement concerning the issues that were expected to be settled during the meeting of the two presidents.
"President Obama is a man of action. He doesn't like to hold fruitless discussion. We haven't prepared the agreements he was expecting to sign, so he decided not to meet with President Putin in Moscow," McFaul told Sobchak.
It doesn't mean, however, that the reset policy is over and that bilateral ties are no longer successful. "In a baseball game you may win four quarters, but lose the fourth one. It doesn't mean, however, that the first three quarters were not successful," he said.
