President Bush declared Tuesday that Russia has "derailed" democratic reforms and that the United States would continue to press it on this issue. The remarks, his most pointed public comments about civil liberties in Russia, came at a time of heightened tensions with Moscow."In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said at a conference organized by current and former dissidents in Prague, scene of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that overthrew communism in what was then Czechoslovakia.
"In areas where we share mutual interests, we work together," Bush said in comments that he applied to Russia and China. "In other areas, we have strong disagreements." The audience included Vaclav Havel, a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution and first president of the Czech Republic, and Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident whose writing about the universality of liberty has been described by Bush as a major influence on him.
Bush's criticism followed several broadsides against the United States and its European allies by Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials. They have employed Cold War-style rhetoric to object to a missile defense system that the United States wants to install in the Czech Republic and Poland.
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