Moscow Russia

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's failure to win Russian support for tougher talk on Iran exposed a divide between the two powers on how best to push Iran into accepting limits on its nuclear ambitions.

The setback does not doom the Obama administration's hopes for diplomatic progress this year on Iran. Nor does it nix another high-priority administration goal: reversing a recent slump in relations with Moscow.

But it muddies the outlook for persuading Iran that painful penalties loom if the regime fails to satisfy U.S. and international concerns that its nuclear program is aimed at building atomic weapons.

On her visit to Moscow this week – her first since becoming secretary of state – Clinton had hoped for a public signal that Russia would consider new sanctions if Iran refused to come clean about its nuclear intentions. Just last month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had raised American hopes by saying that while sanctions are rarely productive "in some cases they are inevitable."

U.S. officials hailed his statement as a shift in tone, but on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov seemed to backtrack by saying his government believes that threatening to impose further sanctions is counterproductive as long as diplomacy has a chance to succeed.

MOSCOW — Russia's leading gay activist said Wednesday that he was disappointed that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with an outspoken foe of gay rights during her two-day trip to Russia and did not decry homophobia in the country.

Clinton attended a ceremony unveiling a statue of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Russian officials including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they "can be described in no other way than as satanic."

Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and U.S. gay activists have claimed him as symbol of their movement.

"Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry we are resetting our relations for the 21st century," Clinton said. A statue of the revered Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was erected at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., in 2000.

Luzhkov also compared Whitman to "our Alexander Pushkin" – but said he was quintessentially American.

MOSCOW — A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin's grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths.

A judge at a Moscow district court rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's claim that Novaya Gazeta damaged Stalin's honor and dignity in an April article that referred to him as a "bloodthirsty cannibal."

The case essentially put Stalin on trial more than 50 years after his death. A ruling against the newspaper would have been seen as an exoneration one of the 20th century's most notorious autocrats.

And it would have dealt a blow to beleaguered Russian liberals, who accuse the Kremlin of whitewashing history.

The late-evening ruling was a rare victory for Stalin's critics in their fight against efforts to rehabilitate the dictator, who according to the rights group Memorial ordered the deaths of at least 724,000 people during a series of purges that peaked in the late 1930s. But defendants said that having the case even make it to court was evidence of a chilling tendency to question the dark side of Soviet history.

MOSCOW — The Kremlin says it's ready to fully restore cooperation with NATO, which was suspended in the aftermath of Russia's war with Georgia.

President Dmitry Medvedev's spokeswoman Nataliya Timakova said Wednesday that a planned visit to Moscow by the NATO chief demonstrates that the alliance is ready for better ties.

Relations between NATO and Russia were frozen after the August 2008 war. NATO accused Russia of using excessive force and occupying Georgian territory.

Timakova says that an EU-commissioned report released Wednesday showed that NATO had made some decision too quickly.

The report says that Georgia's attack on its breakaway province of South Ossetia marked the start of the war, but it also concluded that Russia retaliated with excessive force.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev lauded on Wednesday the Obama administration's decision to scrap plans for an Eastern Europe-based missile shield, a major irritant in relations with Moscow.

"We view this decision as a constructive step in the right direction that deserve a positive response from the international community," Medvedev said, referring to Washington's decision last week to shelve a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile defense shield.

President Barack Obama attributed his decision to abandon the plan to deploy U.S. radars and strategic missile interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland, to a changed perception of the threat posed by Iran.

He said the U.S. government now considered that short- and medium-range missiles from Iran now pose a greater near-term threat than the intercontinental ballistic missiles the Bush plan addressed. A proposed new missile-defense plan would rely on a network of sensors and interceptor missiles based at sea, on land and in the air as a bulwark against any potential Iranian attack.

The original missile defense plan was one of the thorniest issues in U.S.-Russian relations. Obama has sought to improve ties with the Kremlin, declaring he wanted to "reset" relations with the former Cold War rival.

Garry Kasparov stretched his lead over Anatoly Karpov to 3-1 Wednesday on the second day of an exhibition chess match commemorating the 25th anniversary of their marathon first title bout.

Karpov, 58, won his first game of the unofficial tournament, which is being played in the eastern city of Valencia after Kasparov abandoned the game. Kasparov, 46, rebounded to win the second game as Karpov ran out of time.

On Tuesday, Kasparov won the first two semi-rapid games as Karpov struggled to manage his time.

In each of the four games, both players had 25 minutes on the clock and five seconds added after each move.

Playing whites in the first clash Wednesday, Karpov chose a Grunfeld Defense opening, tournament organizers said. In the second game, Kasparov, on whites, opted for a Queen's Gambit, which Karpov declined.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has complained to the Russian Foreign Ministry about a sex tape that U.S. officials call a smear of an American diplomat.

The State Department is calling the video that appeared on a Russian Web site a fabricated montage that includes some real footage of Kyle Hatcher, a married diplomatic liaison to Russian religious and human rights groups.

"Mr. Hatcher has been the subject of a smear campaign in the Russian press and on the Internet to discredit him and his work," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. "We deplore this type of smear campaign."

The video shows Hatcher making telephone calls on a darkened street. Then it cuts to a hotel room, where Hatcher can be seen in a hotel room, apparently from a hidden camera. Later, the video appears to show a man and a woman having sex in the same room with the lights off. It is not clear that man is Hatcher.

In an interview recorded with ABC News, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle blamed the Russian government.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says sanctions are rarely productive but opened the door to tougher ones to halt Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.

After meeting with President Barack Obama in New York, the Russian leader told reporters "in some cases sanctions are inevitable."

Obama's top priority in his sit-down with Medvedev was Iran's nuclear ambitions. Talks are scheduled for next month between a group of nations and Iran, and Obama wants to pursue tougher sanctions if those meetings yield nothing. Yet, Russia has stood in the way of stronger action against Tehran in the past.

Obama told reporters that he remains committed to negotiating with Iran in "serious fashion" but that "serious, additional sanctions" remain a possibility.

Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Georgia and Ukraine starting Monday, meeting leaders eager for further reassurance that Washington still supports their joining NATO and that its effort to warm relations with Russia won't come at their expense.

The Kremlin, having seen several former communist countries of Eastern Europe enter the Western alliance, strongly opposes more of its own former republics joining. And although the Obama administration has insisted nothing has changed regarding the Georgian and Ukrainian candidacies, there's a widespread perception in the former Soviet bloc that the U.S. has opted to move more slowly.

On Thursday, an open letter whose signatories included such icons of the battle against Soviet domination as Poland's Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel urged the Obama administration not to sacrifice Russia's smaller neighbors for better relations with Moscow.

Ukraine and Georgia have drawn some comfort from Obama's explicit warning to Russia, during this month's Moscow summit, to respect its neighbors' borders. Biden's visit comes 11 months after Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war over two breakaway Georgian regions.

"This visit will be aimed at cooling the hotheads in Moscow and starting more active work on de-occupying Georgian territory," said Temuri Yakobashvili, the Georgian government minister in charge of efforts to recover South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Russia has recognized as independent despite international protest.

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