New York Post Online Edition:May 7, 2005 -- President Bush arrived in Latvia last night to start his third European trip this year and found a blunt message from Russia's Vladimir Putin: Stop trying to export democracy.
"Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. [Democracy] must be a product of internal domestic development in a society," Putin told "60 Minutes" in an interview to be aired tomorrow.
Putin is fuming over Bush's support for emerging democracies in the former Soviet Union, such as Georgia and Ukraine, which are no longer under Moscow's thumb and instead lean West — like the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
Bush strongly renewed his vow to spread democracy — in the former Soviet Union as well as Iraq — as the best way to make the world safer and said he intends to tell Putin just that when they meet tomorrow.
"When I see President Putin, I will remind him again that democracies on his border will make it easier for Russia to grow in a peaceful way. Democracies are peaceful," Bush told Georgia's state TV in an interview released yesterday.
"I will remind him that this is not a plot by anybody or any nation. This is just the inevitable course of humankind because all humans want to be free," added Bush, who will become the first U.S. president ever to visit Georgia.
Bush's trip centers around Monday's parade in Moscow to mark the Allied victory over Europe in World War II.
But Bush bracketed his Moscow stop with visits to ex-Soviet and pro-Western Latvia today and Georgia on Tuesday to show he's not endorsing Soviet domination or Putin's current crackdown on democracy.
The long-distance back-and-forth between Bush and Putin underscored the renewed post-Cold War rivalry between Russia and America even as the two leaders insist they're friends.
In interviews, Bush said he was going to Georgia "to feel the sense of a new democracy." He pledged to stand with Latvia if Russia tries to "intimidate" it and blasted pro-Moscow Belarus as the "last dictator in Europe."
Meanwhile, Senate Dem-ocratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada touched off a kerfuffle yesterday by breaking the taboo against criticizing a president while he's overseas.
Reid blasted Bush by saying "I think this guy's a loser" — and then hastily apologized.
After Republicans called Reid's gibe "sad" and said it showed the Democrats to be "devoid of ideas," Reid aides said he called White House political guru Karl Rove to admit that he had crossed the line and to offer an apology.