'Greatest Wrongs Of History'

Bush Slams Soviet Rule In Europe Ahead Of Meeting With Putin

(CBS/AP) 
Mr. Bush said the Yalta agreement, also signed by Britain's Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin, followed in the "unjust tradition" of other infamous war pacts that carved up the continent and left millions in oppression. The Yalta accord gave Stalin control of the whole of Eastern Europe, leading to criticism that Roosevelt had delivered millions of people to communist domination.

"Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable," the president said. "Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable."

Mr. Bush said the United States and its allies eventually recognized they could not be satisfied with the liberation of half of Europe and decided "we would not forget our friends behind an Iron Curtain."

The United States never forgot the Baltic peoples, Mr. Bush said, and flew the flags of free Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania over diplomatic missions in Washington.

"And when you joined hands in protest and the empire fell away," the president said, "the legacy of Yalta was finally buried, once and for all."

Putin, writing in a French newspaper Saturday, said the Soviet Union already made amends in 1989 and his country will not answer the demands of Baltic states for further repentance. "Such pretensions are useless," Putin wrote in Le Figaro.

Mr. Bush reminded Baltic countries that democracy brings obligations along with elections and independence. He said minority rights and equal justice must be protected, a nod to Moscow's concerns about the treatment of Russian-speakers in the three ex-Soviet republics.

Mr. Bush applauded the Baltics for supporting democracy in Ukraine and spoke approvingly of democracy progress in Georgia and Moldova.

At a news conference, Mr. Bush rejected the suggestion that Washington and Moscow work out a mutually agreeable way to bring democracy to Belarus — the former Soviet republic that Mr. Bush calls the "last remaining dictatorship in Europe."

"Secret deals to determine somebody else's fate — I think that's what we're lamenting here today, one of those secret deals among large powers that consigns people to a way of government," Mr. Bush said. He called for "free and open and fair" elections set for next year in Belarus, now run by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Mr. Bush placed a wreath at the Latvian Freedom Monument, a towering obelisk symbolizing this small country's struggle for independence. While he is unpopular across much of Europe because of the Iraq war, Mr. Bush got a warm welcome here.

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga presented Mr. Bush with the nation's top honor, the Three-Star Order, calling him a "signal fighter of freedom and democracy in the world."

Mr. Bush has irritated Russia by bracketing his visit to Moscow Sunday with stops in two former Soviet republics, Latvia and Georgia. He arrived in the Netherlands on Saturday night, ahead of a speech Sunday at an American cemetery.