Rice takes swipe at 'autocratic' Russians

CONDOLEEZZA Rice put her seal on a tough new era of United States-Russia relations yesterday when she criticised Vladimir Putin for impeding democracy.

On the second day of her first visit to Moscow as US Secretary of State, Ms Rice accused the Russian president of autocratic methods of control.

"There should not be so much concentration of power just in the presidency," she said in an interview with the independent radio station Echo Moscow. "There needs to be an independent media.

"For the US-Russia relationship to really deepen and for Russia to gain its full potential, there needs to be democratic development."

Ms Rice said Washington would be monitoring next week’s verdict in the fraud trial of the Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company, after claims that the prosecution was politically motivated.

"Everyone will be watching to see what the Yukos case says about the rule of law in Russia," she said. "We and investors and the rest of the international community will hope that it is a process that inspires confidence."

Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia’s richest man with a fortune of 8 billion, claims that the fraud allegations, which have resulted in him being kept behind bars since 2003, are a politically motivated attack by the Kremlin.

The one olive branch Ms Rice held out in her interview was support for Russia’s continued membership of the G8 group of industrial nations, despite being only the 15th largest economy in the world.

Russia, stung by the Secretary of State’s criticism, gave a frosty reply, with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, saying the US should "strengthen democracy" at home to form better relations with Moscow.

Ms Rice, a former Soviet specialist, later met Mr Putin before heading off to Eastern Europe.