Secretary Clinton is Wheels Down in Moscow! *updated*

If I get more info. on her schedule I’ll update this post:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gets off board upon arrival in Moscow's Vnukovo airport on Thursday, March 18, 2010. Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and to join top international diplomats in assessing the stalled Mideast peace process.(AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

I updated the schedule:

AM LOCAL Secretary Clinton arrives in Moscow, Russia (EDT + 7 hours).

4:00 p.m. LOCAL Secretary Clinton holds a Bilateral Meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow, Russia.

7:30 p.m. LOCAL Secretary Clinton attends a Dinner for the Representatives of the Quartet, in Moscow, Russia.

From Business Week:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will seek to speed up the signing of a new nuclear arms- control treaty and discuss the Middle East peace process during a two-day visit to Moscow that begins today.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will meet Clinton tomorrow to discuss a replacement for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired in December. She will also attend a meeting of the Middle East Quartet group of the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia after Israel sparked controversy with plans to build new housing in east Jerusalem.

Clinton, on her second trip to Russia since taking office, presented her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov with a red reset button a year ago to symbolize a fresh start to relations. Disagreement over the details of the new arms control accord has since put a strain on ties.

“Until the treaty is signed, nothing else in bilateral relations can move forward,” said Pavel Baev, a professor at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. “Both sides invested a lot of effort and personal political capital. I think a compromise will be found.”

[snip]

The U.S. and Russian presidents agreed last year to a blueprint for a new treaty that would reduce nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 and delivery vehicles to between 500 and 1,000. Further details of the protocol have been under negotiation since last April, with disagreements over how much verification should take place and over the placement of U.S. air-defense systems in Europe.

The Middle East Quartet group meets tomorrow after Israel’s announcement of plans to expand Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have stalled, and the U.S. and its partners have condemned the Israeli decision.

Obama said yesterday that there’s no crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations as a result of the clash over the settlements.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said today that countries in the region should create favourable conditions for the resumption of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The Quartet meeting will be devoted to this, he said in an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio.

‘Good Chance’

Clinton and Lavrov will be joined in the Moscow talks by Ban, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and the Quartet’s envoy Tony Blair, the former U.K. prime minister.

“There’s a good chance this meeting will focus more on Iran than the Middle East peace process,” said Cliff Kupchan of New York-based Eurasia Group. “Clinton and the U.S. government are zoned in on Iran.”

The U.S. and its European allies are pushing for additional UN sanctions against Iran to force the country back to negotiations over its nuclear program. The U.S., Britain and Russia make up half of the contact group with Iran. The other members are China, France and Germany.[emphasis added]

With respect to the highlighted portion, I still am not completely sure why Iran is being viewed as an imminent threat that requires that it take precedence over almost all else and I can’t help but wonder if this is more related to domestic American and Israeli politics than anything else. Granted, no one in Europe or the Middle East wants a nuclear Iran, but this has not even risen to the level where the US government was claiming we were with Iraq in 2002-2003 when they were claiming Saddam was an imminent threat due to having WMDs. Iran doesn’t have WMDs- instead, there is a question about whether he may want to acquire them but it seems there is no real consensus on whether a) he has the capability or b) all the necessary components (ie. quantity and concentration of enriched Uranium, among other things).

Also, lets not forget that Israel has a nuclear stockpile, the point of which is to act as a deterrent to hostile nations striking first- even Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Iran wouldn’t be stupid enough to use nuclear weapons against Israel- of course Barak wasn’t speaking about the deterrent factor of Israel’s nuclear weapons, which Israel still refuses to acknowledge it has. So, it seems that we are inadvertently making the argument that despite years and years of nuclear build-up, nuclear weapons aren’t really a deterrent after all.

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