Washington: A senior Democratic senator said on Sunday that the US-Russia relationship had become "poisonous" and urged President Barack Obama to consider moving next month's Group of 20 summit away from the Russian city of St. Petersburg.
Charles Schumer, the US Senate's third ranking Democrat and a close Obama ally, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to antagonise the United States by granting American fugitive Edward Snowden asylum for one year.
"President Putin is behaving like a schoolyard bully," Schumer said on the CBS television talk show "Face the Nation." "In my experience, I've learned unless you stand up to that bully, they ask for more and more and more."
He said Obama should cancel plans to meet Putin in Moscow for a bilateral summit next month that was expected take place during the US president's trip to Russia for the G20 gathering. Schumer said he also would call on Obama to "urge our allies, if it were possible," to try to move the G20 summit from St. Petersburg to another country.
The White House has left unclear whether Obama would stop in Moscow after Russia granted asylum to Snowden, a former intelligence contractor wanted in the United States for leaking details of government surveillance programmes.
Schumer said that because of the Snowden matter, "the relationship between the United States and Russia ... is more poisonous than at any time since the Cold War." Also speaking on CBS, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan said he agreed with Schumer that there should be consequences for Russia's actions.
Ryan, a former vice presidential candidate and influential voice within his party, accused the Obama administration of appeasement with its policy, known as the "reset," begun in 2009, of trying to improve US-Russia relations. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the ABC program "This Week" that Russia's actions were disappointing.
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