Embassy Row

View from Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin today meets with President Bush in a step toward improving relations that soured under Canada’s previous leader, Jean Chretien.

Mr. Martin yesterday outlined the agenda for the White House talks and his hopes for bilateral cooperation on many issues. However, he could not pass up the opportunity to chide the United States for what Canada believes was an overreaction to mad cow disease.

The United States banned the import of Canadian beef and live cows after the disease was found in two Canadian cows.

Canada says the cows were infected years before it adopted regulations to prevent the disease.

“Frankly, we are continually astonished at how quickly the border can be closed when pressures erupt in the United States,” Mr. Martin told the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Protectionism benefits no one.”

In his speech, Mr. Martin outlined Canada’s worldview on global security.

“The ultimate human right is the right to personal security, and so the first duty of government must be to protect its citizens,” he said.

The war against terrorism must be accompanied by programs to help the nations that breed it, he said.

“True security is much more than simply defense against attack,” he said. “It is a conviction that we will be most secure when citizens in all countries are able to participate fully in national life, when they can see clearly that their own well-being and freedom require a functioning state that listens to them and, ultimately, is accountable to them. …

“Day by day, it becomes clear that our long-term security requires the spread of freedom around the world.”

New pragmatism

Russia has dropped its meddlesome ways in neighboring Georgia, bringing fresh hope for a settlement in the long-running battle for control in the breakaway Adzhara region, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania said this week.

Mr. Zhvania, 40, is one of the young reformers swept to power in November’s Rose Revolution, which drove longtime leader Eduard Shevardnadze from office and shook up the south Caucasus region. He met with editors and reporters from The Washington Times at his Willard InterContinental hotel suite during a five-day visit that included meetings with senior administration officials.

New Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili made a point of traveling to Moscow soon after taking office to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Georgia repeatedly has accused its giant neighbor of interfering in its internal affairs by supporting Adzharian leader Aslan Abashidze and other separatist movements.

“Both sides, Georgians and Russians, were sometimes irrational about our relations, but we definitely are seeing a new cooperation, a new pragmatism from Russia about Adzhara,” said Mr. Zhvania. “That is a new factor for the situation we never saw before.”

He noted that Russian forces in the base at Batumi, the main city in Adzhara, “maintained strict neutrality” when tensions soared last month over Mr. Saakashvili’s attempts to reassert central control.

Mr. Zhvania said he had found “a great deal of understanding” in talks with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other officials on the separatist problem.

Georgia clearly is growing frustrated with Mr. Abashidze, who has run the oil-rich region bordering Turkey and the Black Sea as a kind of personal fiefdom. But the new government also has sent mixed signals on its plans.

Mr. Zhvania stressed repeatedly he wants a “peaceful solution,” but Georgia yesterday began major military exercises just outside Adzhara’s borders. Mr. Saakashvili earlier this week vowed to “take care of” Mr. Abashidze if no political solution is reached.

• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.