White House aide Michael McFaul has denied media reports viewing a forthcoming visit to Moscow by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden as the Obama administration's endorsement of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as a possible candidate in the presidential elections due in 2012.
Some media reports have suggested that Biden would express the U.S. administration's support to Medvedev during their meeting in Moscow on March 9.
"We do not in any way see the vice president's trip as an endorsement for any candidate for president in Russia. That would be foolish for us to think that that is our role to play. We're not going to do that," McFaul, who heads the U.S. National Security Council's department for Russian and Eurasian Affairs, replied when asked by a Russian journalist to comment on the reports on Friday.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Medvedev have said that they will take a joint decision on who of them will run in the presidential elections, scheduled for March 2012.
The U.S. vice president will meet with Putin on March 10. Only issues of bilateral cooperation are planned to be addressed during Biden's meetings with Putin and Medvedev, McFaul said.
"What we are going to do is... to build on the reset. We want to build on the dimensions that we think are lacking and need more attention and have to deal with innovation," he said.
Biden's trip includes a visit to the town of Skolkovo outside Moscow, where a hi-tech research hub designed as Russia's response to the Silicon Valley, is under construction.
"We're going to Skolkovo on purpose. President Medvedev came to our Silicon Valley. We welcomed that. We celebrated that... We see that as important," he said, referring to Medvedev's visit to the United States in June 2010.
In a bid to steer Russia's economy away from an unhealthy dependence on oil and gas, Medvedev has made the development of the innovation sector a cornerstone of his domestic policies.
McFaul said the United States wanted to widen cooperation with Russia in various spheres.
"This cannot be a relationship just about arms control and nonproliferation. It has to be about investment. It has to be about innovation, and it has to be about a lot of the topics that we are trying to address in the course of the bilateral presidential commission," he said.
The Russian-U.S. presidential commission, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, was created as a result of a meeting between Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama in July 2009 in Moscow.
WASHINGTON, March 5 (RIA Novosti)
