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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 2022)
September 21, 2022 Page 5 s ports Griner Release Negotiations Strained Whelan, Griner families to meet President Biden (AP) -President Joe Biden plans to meet at the White House with family members of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, both of whom remain jailed in Russia, the White House announced Thursday. “He wanted to let them know that they remain front of mind and that his team is working on this ev- ery day, on making sure that Brit- tney and Paul return home safely,” White House press secretary Kar- ine Jean-Pierre said at Thursday’s press briefing at the White House. The separate meetings are to be the first in-person encounter between Biden and the families and are taking place amid sus- tained but so far unsuccessful efforts by the administration to secure the Americans’ release. The administration said in July that it had made a “substantial proposal” to get them home, but despite plans for the White House meetings, there is no sign a breakthrough is imminent. “While I would love to say that the purpose of this meeting is to inform the families that the Rus- sians have accepted our offer and we are bringing their loved ones home — that is not what we’re seeing in these negotiations at this time,” Jean-Pierre said. She added: “The Russians should accept our offer. The Russians should accept our offer today.” Griner has been held in Russia since February on drug-related charges. She was sentenced last month to nine years in prison af- WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner is escorted from a court room after a hearing(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) ter pleading guilty and has ap- pealed the punishment. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that he and his family say are false. The U.S. government regards both as wrongfully detained, placing their cases with the office of its top hos- tage negotiator. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of announcing two months ago that the administration had made a substantial proposal to Russia. Since then, U.S officials have con- tinued to press that offer in hopes of getting serious negotiations underway, and have been follow- ing up through the same channel that produced an April prisoner swap that brought Marine veteran Trevor Reed home from Russia, said a senior administration offi- cial who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in advance of Thursday’s formal announcement. The negotiations, already strained because of tense rela- tions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have also been com- plicated by Russia’s apparent resistance to the proposal the Americans put on the table. The Russians, who have indi- cated that they are open to nego- tiations but have chided the Amer- icans to conduct them in private, have come back with suggestions that are not within the administra- tion’s ability to deliver, said the administration official, declining to elaborate. The administration has not provided specifics about its pro- posal, but a person familiar with the matter previously confirmed it had offered to release Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms deal- er who is imprisoned in the U.S. and who has long been sought by Moscow. It is also possible that, in the interests of symmetry, Russia might insist on having two of its citizens released from prison. Biden spoke by phone in July with Griner’s wife, Cherelle, and with Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth, but both families have also re- quested in-person meetings. On Friday, Biden plans to speak at the White House with Cherelle Griner and with the player’s agent in one meeting and with Elizabeth Whelan in the other, according to the official. The meetings are being done separately so as to ensure that each family has private time with the president. But the fact that they are happening on the same day shows the extent to which the two cases have become inter- twined since the only deal that is presumably palatable to the U.S. is one that gets both Americans — a famous WNBA player and a Michigan man who until recently was little known to the public — home together at the same time, In the past several months, rep- resentatives of both families have expressed frustration over what they perceived as a lack of aggres- sive action and coordination from the administration. Cherelle Griner, for instance, told The Associated Press in an interview in June that she was dismayed after the failure of a phone call from her wife that was supposed to have been patched through by the Ameri- can Embassy in Moscow left the couple unable to connect on their fourth anniversary. Whelan’s relatives have sought to keep attention on his case, anxious that it has been overshadowed in the public eye by the focus on the far more prominent Griner — a two-time Olympic gold medalist and sev- en-time WNBA all-star. They also conveyed disappointment when Whelan, despite having been held in Russia since De- cember 2018, was not included in a prisoner swap last April that brought home Reed. Advertise We are Open! 3901 N. Mississippi Ave. Portland, OR 97227 P: 503.281.0453 Fax 503.281.3408 Web: www.sunlanlighting.com E-mail: kay@sunlanlighting.com with diversity in The Portland Observer BUSINESS GUIDE Call 503-288-0033 ads@portlandobserver.com
