Bad timing for Russia's dealings with Iraq

The timing could hardly be worse: According to the Iraqi ambassador, Iraq and Russia are close to signing a $40 billion economic cooperation plan.

The deal is a development troubling to U.S. diplomats. To say the least, if it pans out, this agreement holds the potential for greatly complicating U.S.-Russian relations, which have thawed so dramatically in recent years to the great betterment of both countries.

The troubled diplomats are engaged, just now, with the arduous task of winning support for U.S. military action against Iraq to carry out the Bush policy of what's being called "regime change" in that country.

One of the great and underappreciated facts of recent years, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, is the improving bilateral relations between this longtime adversary and America.

Not long after taking office last year, President Bush met with Russian president Vladimir Putin and pronounced himself greatly pleased with the personal relationship the two leaders established.

Since that meeting, President Bush has repeatedly stressed the importance of this relationship, even taking some hits for having said, rather dramatically, that he had looked into Putin's eyes and gained some telling insights "into his soul."

The meeting even featured an exchange of Christian insights Bush shared with the former KGB leader.

Bush has related that he told Putin that Russia's future lies with the West, and not the East, with which that vast nation was oriented through the balance of the last century.

The emerging new axis of U.S.-Russian cooperation emphatically includes Russian cooperation in the war against international terrorism, as Putin has concluded his interests lie with the civilized world and against savagery.

Against all this promise we are reminded -- if indeed the Russia-Iraqi deal goes through -- that such promising openings are one thing, while the permanent interests of nation-states are another.

It is frustrating that Russia would pursue such a deal with the odious Saddam Hussein regime at the very moment Saddam is about to reprise his role as Target No. 1, but such are the vagaries of international affairs.

This is when presidents, and the diplomats they appoint, earn their pay.