The Moment that Frank Zappa warned us about?

[ProSense]

35. Kissinger has close ties to Putin and Russia

Kerry Consults Kissinger on Getting to Yes With Russians

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan

Secretary of State John Kerry is consulting Henry Kissinger, the 90-year-old embodiment of Cold War foreign policy, before heading off to negotiate with his Russian counterpart over Syria’s chemical weapons.

After meeting today with former Secretary Kissinger at the State Department, Kerry will bring other U.S.-Russia specialists on his plane when he flies to Geneva for two days of meetings starting tomorrow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to a U.S. official who asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to comment.

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Though the meeting with Kissinger was planned before the latest developments in Syria, Kerry was eager to draw on the older man’s experience in communicating effectively with Russian diplomats, the U.S. official said. Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union and served as secretary of State and national security adviser to Republican President Richard Nixon. The U.S. official described Kerry as a fan of Kissinger’s 1994 book, “Diplomacy.”

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Early last year, Kissinger met in Moscow to discuss world affairs with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose press secretary described the men as “old friends” and said that they had previously met eight to 10 times, including over dinner at Kissinger’s home in New York...In Putin’s book “First Person,” he recounted a conversation with Kissinger in the early 1990s when Putin, then an aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg, picked up the German-born American diplomat at the airport.

Kissinger impressed Putin by saying that he too got his start as an intelligence specialist, and that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew his nation’s forces from Eastern Europe too quickly.

“I told him what I thought and I will repeat it now: Kissinger was right,” Putin wrote.

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http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-11/kerry-consults-kissinger-on-getting-to-yes-with-old-foe-russians

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023649540