"The sherpas at the G-8 will have a hard time bringing Russia on board on Libya & Syria"

"The last thing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did before departing for France to attend this week's Group of Eight summit meeting in Deauville was place a call to Damascus.  Prima facie, one may think the call made sense, since as Reuters reported, "Syria's crackdown on pro-democracy protests" is going to be high on the agenda of the summit. But Medvedev had other thoughts on his mind; he wanted to ostentatiously pick up the thread from his previous conversation with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on April 6... ... The sherpas at the G-8 will have a hard time bringing Russia on board on Libya and Syria. Maybe, on the Palestinian issue Russia could share some common ground with European opinion, which also in principle welcomes Palestinian unity, but it will be interesting to see if the G-8 could bring itself to say something positive about the accord between Fatah and Hamas. Indeed, the US has upheld Israel's strong objections to the accord.

Medvedev's conversation with Assad on Tuesday signifies both an assurance of support to the Syrian leader as well as an early warning to Western powers at the G-8 that Russia would have a problem going along with any threatening noises against Damascus.  Once already - at his press conference in Moscow on May 17 - Medvedev has asserted that he would not allow a UN resolution authorizing sanctions against Syria to pass "even if my friends are going to beg me to". What he meant was that he was prepared to be in a minority of one at Deauville.  These Middle Eastern discords do not provide a conducive setting for Obama and Medvedev to have a fruitful meeting at Deauville. It appears that Moscow has already estimated that Medvedev's meeting with Obama is not going to produce any significant forward movement on the missile defense issue.... The Deauville meeting will be a turning point. It will reveal whether or not the US-Russia "reset" policy is still holding. Clearly, the two sides are no longer able to build on the "reset"..."