American President Barack Obama announced Aug 7 that he will cancel a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, partly because of Russian human rights abuses, The Washington Post reports.
“We have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a US-Russia Summit in early September,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
“We have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda.”
John Aravosis, at America Blog, reports that a White House official confirmed the decision was partly related to Russian human rights abuses against gay people.
A White House press release after Carney’s statement listed problems with human rights and civil society along with missile defence, arms control, trade, global security and political asylum for Edward Snowden as factors in the cancellation.
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