Bush raps Putin on democracy

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PRAGUE -- President Bush yesterday escalated the war of words with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the Kremlin's leader has "derailed" democracy and moved his former communist nation away from reforms that once promised freedom for its citizens.

The president, delivering a speech in the very room where the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991, also chastised Mr. Putin for suggesting that a planned U.S. missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe is intended to target Moscow.

In his 30-minute speech, which celebrated the surge of global democracy and pointedly criticized nations where civil liberties are denied or limited, Mr. Bush stoked a fiery dispute with the Russian leader, two days before the two were set to meet at the Group of Eight summit in Germany.

"In Russia, reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," the president said, calling U.S.-Russia relations "complex."

Now grouping Russia with the much more recalcitrant China, Mr. Bush said: "In the areas where we share mutual interests, we work together. In other areas, we have strong disagreements."

But in a speech filled with reminders of the Cold War, praise for Soviet dissidents and declarations of the moral superiority of freedom and liberty over tyranny, Mr. Bush said the U.S. continues its friendship with both nations.

"As our relationships with South Korea and Taiwan during the Cold War prove, America can maintain a friendship and push a nation toward democracy at the same time," he said.

Mr. Putin has grown increasingly combative about U.S. plans to install a missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe -- with a radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 missiles spread over four military bases in Poland, which borders Russia.

He has accused the United States of stoking a new Cold War, threatened to target Europe with missiles if the U.S. shield is installed and, on Monday, claimed that he is the world's last remaining "pure" democratic leader, comparing himself to India's nonviolent independence hero Mahatma Gandhi.

"If the U.S. nuclear potential extends across the European territory, we will get new targets in Europe," the Russian leader said this week.