MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin's concentration of power is stifling his country's transition to democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.
"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.
The top American diplomat encouraged the activists to build institutions of democracy. These would help combat arbitrary state power amid increasing pressure from the Kremlin, she said.
The U.S. is concerned about the centralization of power and democratic backsliding ahead of Russia's legislative and presidential elections in December and March. Rice sought opinions and assessments of the situation from eight prominent rights leaders.
"I talked to people about the coming months and how they see the coming months. How these two elections are carried out will have an effect on whether Russia is making the next step on toward democracy," Rice said after the private sessions at Spaso House, the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow.
Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday received a chilly reception from Putin and senior Russian officials on U.S. proposals for cooperating on a missile defense system in Eastern Europe that Russia vehemently opposes.
But as she has in the past, Rice declined comment on Putin's possible political future and said she did not raise the matter in her official discussions.
Putin will step down next year as president. He has said he would lead the ticket of the main pro-Kremlin party in the parliamentary elections and could take the prime minister's job later. This has worried many democracy advocates.
Although she would not speculate about Putin's ambitions, Rice said there were signs that whatever transition occurs could be smooth.
"To the degree that anyone can predict, it looks like it will be fairly stable," she said. "But, I would just caution that change is change."
Earlier, Rice said she hoped the efforts of rights activists would promote universal values of "the rights of individuals to liberty and freedom, the right to worship as you please, and the right to assembly, the right to not have to deal with the arbitrary power of the state."
"How is it going?" asked Rice, a former Soviet expert. "That's what I want to hear. How is it going and what can we do to help Russia to build strong institutions that have these universal values?"
In a second meeting at the residence with business, media and civil society leaders, Rice said she was "especially interested in talking about how you view (the) political evolution of Russia, the economic evolution of Russia."
"Russia is a country that's in transition and that transition is not easy and there are a lot of complications and a lot of challenges," Rice said. "If Russia is to emerge as a democratic country that can fully protect the rights of its people, it is going to emerge over years and you have to be a part of helping the emergence of that Russia."
Participants in the meetings said Rice did not offer any judgments about the state of human rights and democracy under Putin.
Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, "She did not give an assessment. Those present gave their evaluation of the situation as a whole, and discussed particular areas of human-rights violations."
Tatyana Lokshina, the head of the Demos human-rights center, said they discussed recent troubling legislation that some fear could be used against the political opposition, rule of law issues and the human-rights situations in the Caucasus.
"We talked about the problems of weak democratic institutions, the problem of freedom of speech, and the situation in the judicial system," she told Interfax news agency.
Svetlanna Gannushkina told Ekho Moskvy radio that the activists discussed persistent corruption, growing restrictions on media access for opposition and rights groups and continuing violence in the troubled North Caucasus region, where Chechnya is located.
Vladimir Lukin, the government-appointed human rights ombudsman, was quoted by Interfax as saying he told Rice that human rights should be discussed in a dialogue rather lecturing in a "doomsday" style.
The State Department has frequently criticized what Washington regards as creeping authoritarianism among Putin and other top Russian leaders.
Its most recent human-rights report on Russia notes continuing centralization of power in the Kremlin, a compliant legislature, political pressure on the judiciary, intolerance of ethnic minorities, corruption and selectivity in enforcement of the law, and media restrictions and self-censorship.
Rice and Gates later met with Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov for talks on trade and economic relations, including negotiations for Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.
Moscow and Washington signed a trade agreement last November that removed the last major obstacle in Moscow's 13-year journey to join the 149-member group. Moscow must still conclude other outstanding bilateral deals and assuage the European Union's concerns about energy supplies.
The Russian government press service said Zubkov also pressed the Americans to work to abolish the Jackson-Vanik amendment. The 1974 measure ties Russia's trade status to whether it freely allows Jewish emigration.
