Russia Weekly June 9, 2000

At first glance, the Russian-U.S. summit in Moscow ended without any serious results. Yes, agreements were reached to destroy 68 tons of arms-grade plutonium and to create a joint center to monitor missile launches. But these agreements were fully prepared beforehand.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin spent more than 10 hours together while their aides were also busy negotiating, but they did not manage to solve the main issue: finding a way to allow the United States to begin deploying a limited national missile defense while preserving the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that would insure NMD will not threaten the effectiveness of the Russian nuclear deterrent.

This summit resembles the meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Then, too, the main stumbling block was a U.S. desire to revise the ABM treaty to build a "Star Wars" missile defense. In Reykjavik, there was some progress on arms control, but in the end Reagan and Gorbachev failed to bridge the gap. But an unprecedented thaw in Russian-U.S. relations occurred soon after Reykjavik, ending the Cold War and producing sweeping arms control agreements. Could this June Moscow summit also be a prologue to a new dÎtente?

Russia under Putin seems to be ready to embrace the West. On Sunday, Russia agreed for the first time that it may be possible in principle to amend the ABM Treaty if the effectiveness of the Russian nuclear deterrent is guaranteed and the United States makes corresponding concessions in reducing the number of strategic ballistic missiles under a new START III treaty. Before the summit, Moscow's position had been that no changes in ABM were possible.

Of course, any agreement on ABM that will tacitly allow NMD can only come after strenuous negotiations. It is unclear now whether, if the Kremlin decides to compromise on ABM, it will swing a deal with Clinton or wait for his successor. What is clear is the overall price the Kremlin is expecting to get for playing ball on ABM.

Russia wants an agreement to put a limit of fewer than 2,000 (or even 1,500) on the number of strategic warheads under START III. Such an accord could allow Russia to spend less on making new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russia would also demand that strict limits are imposed on NMD capabilities. Such concessions could also help the Kremlin sell any future ABM deal to the Russian public and military.

On top of that, the United States and the West will unequivocally have to accept Putin as kosher - and everything he does, too. This may be the ugliest part of the bargain. But the statements Clinton made (or didn't make) Sunday were already very conciliatory: alleged Russian war crimes in Chechnya were not mentioned at all; harassment of the press and recent authoritarian tendencies in Putin's domestic policies were mentioned in the feeblest terms possible.

In the end, it boiled down to Clinton's saying that Putin guaranteed that freedom of the press and human rights in Chechnya would be secure. A reassuring statement indeed, especially if one considers the very real possibility that Putin himself may yet be implicated in war crimes or other human rights abuses.

"I know you don't like what I did in Kosovo, and you know I don't like what you are doing in Chechnya," said Clinton to State Duma deputies, obviously trying to placate Communists and nationalists and apparently implying: Who cares much about Kosovo and Chechnya anyway? Are these problems so serious they should damage our friendship?

Clinton's public pronouncements in Moscow are an extreme example of the appeasement of brutal repression. But the Duma deputies were not impressed. Clinton's speech, helped by a rigid translator, had the pitch of a Soviet functionary addressing the Central Committee. The deputies criticized some aspects of the lecture, but in general Clinton did rather well.

In any event, the Duma does not mean much in this country. All real decisions are made in the Kremlin, and Putin seemed very pleased Sunday: He received a serious public endorsement without conceding anything serious. In the Soviet period, the Communists were forced to let thousands of Jews emigrate or make some other conciliatory gesture on the eve of a U.S. presidential visit. In May 1995, when Clinton was in Moscow, a cease-fire was announced in Chechnya. This time, bombs were falling nonstop as Clinton told reporters: "We all just had a nice visit."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal to build a joint antimissile defense system with NATO and Europe has some intriguing aspects - but it's likely more opening move than final geopolitical gambit, say US arms-control experts.

If nothing else, the recent summit between Russia and the US showed that Russia's new leader is in no hurry to engage the Clinton administration in missile defense talks. Mr. Putin may want to wait and see what the next US president has to offer.

And while Putin agreed that nuclear-tipped missiles from North Korea and other rogue states could be a danger to the world in the future, there was no meeting of the minds in Moscow on when that future might arrive. "That is certainly part of what we've been hearing from them - they feel that the threat is exaggerated," said a senior administration official at a briefing for reporters after the summit's conclusion.

Putin is already taking his defense plan and promoting it on the road. He pressed the issue during a visit to Italy earlier this week, claiming that his alternate system would guard against a rogue state nuclear attack while staying within the current bounds of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM).

Not that he provided details of exactly what that alternate system might be. So far, the Russian leader has only discussed a general approach. A lid over rogue nations

The idea - first floated by Putin in a broadcast interview prior to the summit - would be for Russia, Europe, and the US to jointly develop interceptor rockets that would be based near potentially dangerous countries such as North Korea or Iraq. These defenses would then shoot down attacking nuclear missiles in the boost phase, shortly after launch.

The system's limited ability wouldn't break the ABM pact, according to Putin. The US, by contrast, wants to renegotiate the ABM Treaty to allow construction of a national missile defense on US soil. Interceptor rockets would shoot down nuclear warheads as they coasted through space, or descended through the atmosphere.

The Russian system would be analogous to placing a lid over rogue nations. The US approach would be to build an umbrella over itself. US officials were careful not to reject Russia's ideas out of hand. There have been military-to-military talks about the possibility of cooperating on various kinds of missile defense, they noted. Some of the technology involved might be relevant to future systems. This stuff takes time

But none of it could be ready in the next five years - after which time the US believes North Korea will be able to field a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile.

"We don't have any reason for confidence that we could develop a system of ... boost-phase intercept in anything like the time frame in which this threat is maturing," said a senior administration official. Furthermore, the harder you look at the Russian proposal, the more practical problems become apparent, say private arms-control experts. If it is a jointly run system, who gets to push the button to shoot something down? Would the safety of the US depend on Russia agreeing that a particular blip on a radar screen was an attack that merited a response?

How would costs be shared? Where would the system be deployed? Perhaps most importantly, would Russia's "lid" approach provide more robust protection against theater missiles than longer-range, faster ballistic weapons? If so, it would protect Russia, US allies, and US forces abroad, while leaving the US mainland less-protected. Such a situation would likely be unacceptable to US political leaders.

"At first blush it's an interesting proposal, but the deeper you go, the more uninspired it is," says Michael Krepon, president of the Stimson Center, a Washington-based security think tank.

If Russia really wanted to be helpful in defending against rogue-nation nuclear capabilities, they could immediately tighten up export controls to Iran and be more helpful in the attempt to get UN weapons inspectors back inside Iraq, notes Mr. Krepon.

"Effective missile defenses are layered defenses," he says. "One needs multiple solutions, including solutions that don't involve missile interceptors, such as tightening nonproliferation treaties." Russian leaders must be aware that a proposal to work on defenses that would not protect the US mainland would be unacceptable to the United States, says Baker Spring, a defense expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Looking beyond Clinton

Their proposal, he says, appears to reflect a belief that President Clinton is already irrelevant to the future of missiles defenses and the ABM pact. "I believe the Russians believe Clinton can't do this deal," says Mr. Spring. That's only partly because of the president's lame-duck status. The GOP-led Senate would never approve the Russian proposal, says Spring, himself a former Republican congressional staff member. The political future of missile defense, in the US, won't be clear until after the November elections, if then.

Moscow, 8th June: China and other countries, including Russia, will take steps to offset the effects of the United States deploying its national antiballistic system, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Ivanov said in a `Komsomolskaya Pravda' interview published today.

The system will undoubtedly be intended to intercept Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles and to obtain unilateral advantages for the United States, Ivanov said.

"Both for Russia and in global terms this is a key security issue. But how can we keep the Americans from doing this? We argue with them, we advance arguments. I do not think a final decision will be made by the Clinton administration, but the next one can do this. It must give six months notice of withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and then the United States is bound by no commitments whatsoever," Ivanov said.

"We have made it clear what we will do in that case. This decision would dash START-1 and START-2. The agreements on medium-range missiles would follow," he said.

"There is no telling what China and other countries will do. The important thing is that a tremendous amount of about 60bn dollars has been earmarked for the development of a Strategic Defence Initiative-like programme. Who can resist this kind of money?" Ivanov said.

The United States said Thursday cooperation with Russia on missile defenses, while welcome in principle, should be "as a supplement, not as a substitute" for a planned US anti-missile shield.

A Russian proposal for a joint Russian-NATO "boost phase" missile defense system would take years to develop and must overcome daunting technological challenges, US Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocombe said here. "We welcome the prospect of cooperation in principle but as a supplement, not as a substitute, for the timely deployment of the system which we have in mind," Slocombe said.

Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev is scheduled to meet with NATO defense ministers here Friday to lay out Russian President Vladimir Putin's surprise proposal for a joint missile defense system to protect Europe. "The United States, like everybody else, is uncertain what the Russians have in mind, or indeed whether they have in mind any kind of a technically detailed proposal," he said. "But we hope Marshal Sergeyev will have some specific details to provide."

US Defense Secretary William Cohen and his NATO counterparts discussed the Russian proposal at the start of a two-day meeting at NATO headquarters. Unveiled Monday on the heels of a US-Russian summit, Putin's proposal calls for protecting Europe with tactical missile defense systems that home in on an intercontinental ballistic missile's fiery plume as it lifts into space. That contrasts with US plans for a National Missile Defense (NMD) system that would protect the United States by intercepting incoming ballistic missiles in space.

Neither the United States nor Russia has developed a "boost phase" missile defense system of the type proposed by Putin, Slocombe said. "There is nothing physically impossible about building a boost phase system, but there are serious technical challenges," he said.

It would have to detect, track and destroy an ICBM in the first three to five minutes of flight, before the missile's boosters stop firing, he said. The missile interceptor would have to be capable of very fast acceleration to outrace the ICBM, and the tracking system would have to be accurate enough to catch changes in speed while the ICBM is in powered flight, he said. Moreover, the interceptors must be within several hundred miles of the launch site to strike, he said.

"There is also the very non-trivial problem that this is going to have to be a very fast reactive system, and you would have to find some ways to make sure you didn't shoot down space launches or normal missile tests of other kinds," he said.

"In principle you could design and deploy a system that meets all of these technical problems. But you'd need a new interceptor, new sensors, new radar, and new command system and it would take many years to do it," he said. Slocombe contended that the system proposed by the Russians also would require changes of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Russia so far has adamantly refused to accept changes to the treaty that would allow the United States to deploy a limited system anti-missile system, which Washington says would stop a few tens of missiles but be useless against Russia's vast arsenal.

US officials have said they are encouraged that Russia now accepts that the proliferation of ballistic missiles poses a threat, but have expressed concern that Putin's proposal may be a ploy to divide the alliance. "This could be a constructive proposal but it could be simply a tactic to divide the Europeans in NATO from the United States," Cohen told reporters on his way here.

(Senior Defense Dept. official on pact signed by Clinton, Putin)

A senior U.S. Defense Department official told reporters at the Pentagon June 6 that the shared Early Warning agreement signed by President Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin at their summit in Moscow "is a step to strengthen strategic stability by further reducing [the] risk that an accident could result in a ballistic missile launch."

Speaking on background, the official said the agreement basically provides for the two countries to provide each other "with near real-time, continuous flow of information" from early warning sensors, including launch time, launch point, rough direction of launch, impact point, and time.

Two Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs) are involved, according to the official. The first deals with how early warning information will be provided to a Joint Data Exchange Center in Moscow, which is estimated to open in about a year. The second concerns the intent of both countries "to try to work out the arrangements of a pre-launch notification regime that could then be opened up very broadly to whatever countries wanted to participate."

Asked if joint monitoring might not solve the dilemma of an accidental nuclear war, the official said that knowing and sharing cannot solve the problem, but that both Russia and the United States agree "that both sides should have decent early warning capability." He said the parties are not as concerned about "intentional launches" as they are about "misinterpreting events."

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IntellectualCapital.com

June 8-15, 2000

The Summit: A Notable Non-Event

by Richard Pipes

The recent Moscow summit between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and President Clinton received media attention due to a major historic happening and yet it produced virtually no concrete results. The Clinton administration tried to damped expectations, but even so Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state and the administration's principle Russian expert, on arriving in Moscow to prepare the talks, predicted that the meeting will "mark a new chapter in the relations between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Putin." It is difficult to see what difference this new relationship can possibly make, given that President Clinton will leave his office in eight months. In fact, the two men displayed little warmth toward each other and handled their encounter as a photo opportunity. Clinton, towering over Putin and self-confident, clearly made the better impression: Putin still has not grown into his high office and appears like a man ill at ease in large public functions. Perhaps this is a legacy of his KGB days when he had to be as unobtrusive as possible. What about the missiles

As widely publicized, the main subject of the summit was to be the U.S. desire to amend the 1972 ABM Treaty in order to permit the deployment of a limited missile defense system against North Korea. Russia has taken a very dim view of the proposal and our European allies have sided with it. There is evidence that Moscow uses this difference in opinion to drive a wedge between Europe and America.

American proponents of deployment of what has come to be known as National Missile Defense (NMD) counter foreign objections with two major arguments. One holds that the ABM Treaty -- which had been signed with the Soviet government -- no longer has any validity since that government has ceased to exist nine years ago. Indeed, Moscow lends tacit support to this contention by demanding that the country's Soviet-era foreign debt be cancelled.

Secondly, it is argued, U.S. national security needs ought not to be determined by a foreign power. The ABM Treaty rested on the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), developed by arms-control specialists, which advanced a rather paradoxical thesis that in the nuclear age great powers can feel secure only if the feel insecure: that is, if they are hostage to each other. This premise, of questionable validity even 30 years ago, is difficult to sustain in our time when nuclear weapons are proliferating and the nuclear rivalry no longer pits two stable super-powers. Putin seems to have concluded that the United States will proceed with some kind of missile defense system with or without Russia's consent. Talbott lent credence to this belief when he said in Moscow that there was "little doubt" the United States would eventually make changes in the ABM Treaty because the "world has changed a lot since 1972." For this reason, the Russian president has offered a counter-proposal in the form of a ballistic missile defense system that would seek to destroy the missiles at launch rather than in flight. (In U.S. terminology, this is known as "boost phase defense.") Such a solution, in Russian eyes, would make it possible to localize the defenses and not threaten Russia's deterrent. This might not be a bad solution, but it finds no favor with American experts who consider such a method technically unreliable.

A holding pattern

The best part of Clinton's visit to Moscow was his address to both houses of the Russian parliament, where he spoke with conviction and dignity of the benefits of democracy. Although some extremist deputies voiced anger at the American president's "interference" in internal Russian affairs, such xenophobic outbursts need not be taken seriously.

One suspects that U.S.-Russian relations will be on hold for the next half a year or so, and open a genuine "new chapter" only after the American elections. If Al Gore wins the presidency little is likely to change (although the Democratic candidate has recently expressed, rather cautiously, a willingness to abandon the ABM Treaty). If George W. Bush takes over the White House, U.S. policy is likely to become somewhat harder if only because he will not feel obligated to defend the Clinton-Gore record on relations with post-Soviet Russia.

Richard Pipes is Research Professor of History at Harvard University. In 1981-82 he served as Director of East European and Soviet Affairs in the National Security Council. He is a contributing editor of IntellectualCapital.com.

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U.S.: Analysts Urge New Policy Towards Russia

By Andrew F. Tully

American analysts say U.S. policies are at least in part to blame for the troubles besetting Russia today. But rather than assigning blame, they told a forum in Washington on Tuesday that the American government can learn from its mistakes to mount a new and constructive relationship with Russia for the next 100 years. RFE/RL's Andrew F. Tully reports.

Washington, 7 June 2000 (RFE/RL) -- A group of foreign policy experts say the U.S. must examine its policy mistakes with Russia over the past decade in order to build a meaningful policy for the next century.

The specialists offered their analyses on Tuesday at a forum on Capitol Hill in Washington sponsored by the Hudson Institute, a foreign policy think tank. Presiding over the forum were two members of the U.S. Congress, Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tennessee) and Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania). These experts agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a double standard when dealing with the West. The theory is most succinctly put by Constantine Menges, director of the Program on Transitions to Democracy at George Washington University in Washington.

"I would begin my few minutes with my sense of the strategic objectives of the current Russian regime, which I believe, currently, are to counter the United States abroad while at the same time maintaining the flow of Western funds to support Russia -- in other words, to have it both ways." Another analyst present was Paul Wolfowitz, the dean of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He noted that Russia is reaping tens of millions of dollars for helping Iran with its missile program. At the same time, it is accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. to participate in the American space program.

"It may make a lot of sense to the Russians if they can have both of those things, but it makes no sense from the point of view of the United States, and we should ask them to choose, we should make them choose. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to choose between the rewards of working with the United States and the rather puny rewards of working with the Iranians. The problem is that we've gone along with excuse after excuse that has allowed them to have it both ways."

The policy analysts agreed that Western leaders had high hopes for Russia when Boris Yeltsin took over after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1992. Now, they say, it is up to U.S. leaders to examine how they may have contributed to the problems that Russia poses. And each participant recommended that the American government set up a commission to study what mistakes have been made over the past decade and how the West can learn from these mistakes. Most of the analysts tended to take a positive approach to the friction between Washington and Moscow, but Menges took a bleak approach. He noted that the forum was being held on the 56th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France during World War II. He said that war began because of a failure to see how Germany would evolve after its defeat in World War I. "There was the opportunity for Germany to have become democratic. It didn't. And when the dictatorship succeeded, there was a need to have competent policies to deal with it. And I say that because I think we understand that Russia has 6,000 operational strategic nuclear warheads. Today, as we sit here."

One recurring theme throughout Tuesday's forum was that Washington seemed to be more interested in supporting an individual -- Yeltsin -- rather than a political, economic and legal structure that would promote democracy and individual liberties. As a result, they said, Russia is now governed by a man who seems to put stability over democracy, and central governmental control over individual freedom.

But Wolfowitz said it would be a mistake to overstress the importance of U.S. influence. He said Russia faces difficult choices, and it is up to the Russian people to decide.

"Those choices, as I think have been correctly pointed out, depend on internal developments in Russia. And those internal developments are largely in the hands of the Russian people."

Wolfowitz said one of these choices is whether to become great as Japan and Germany did after their defeat in World War II. He said their method was to have exemplary political and economic structures.

But Wolfowitz said Russia may instead seek greatness by trying to be a colonial power, increasing its wealth by terrorizing its client states. But this, he concluded, could only leave Russia impoverished, backward, and uneducated.

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Putin in race to force through bills, cement his authority

MOSCOW, June 8 (AFP) -

President Vladimir Putin has a month to force through key laws bolstering his control over Russia's unruly regions or see his authority emasculated by vested interests and lobby groups, analysts warn.

After a month of supine compliance with Putin's every wish, lawmakers are suddenly voicing opposition to the new Kremlin master, who won March elections vowing to restore a strong central state and impose order. Regional governors on Wednesday savaged his plan to oust them from the Federation Council, accusing the former KGB spy-turned-president of seeking to pack the upper house of parliament with grey stooges. Furious lobbying by trade unions in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, meanwhile forced Putin to beat a tactical retreat on his plans to impose central control over Russia's social welfare contribution system. They stand to lose control of billions of rubles contained in social security funds which the state wants to merge into one system run by the federal tax service.

But far from signalling the birth of a credible parliamentary opposition with coherent policy alternatives, Putin is facing down corporate and vested interest who grew in power under ex-president Boris Yeltsin, analysts say. "The opposition are regional civil servants and the governors, who are merely a lobby," said Yury Korgunyuk of the INDEM think-tank. "There are no strong political parties, therefore all opposition comes from various lobbies, which are very powerful."

Observers say Putin's political credibility rests on his ability to change the make-up of the Federation Council and secure the right to sack any of Russia's 89 governors and regional parliaments.

The president must force the bills containing the changes through the Duma by the July 7 recess or face a long hot summer of discontent and mounting opposition to his strategy, they say.

"Putin's political survival is at stake," said Korgunyuk. "He has no choice but to go all the way. If the laws are delayed there will be no need to adopt them at all. Time is not on Putin's side."

Governors came to the fore under Boris Yeltsin, as the former president secured their support in his serial battles with the Duma by granting a string of concessions that boosted their influence over the federal centre. "This combination of executive power in the regions with legislative power in the centre made (the Federation Council) very dangerous," for the man who replaced Yeltsin in the Kremlin, said Sergei Kolmakov, deputy head of the Fond Politika think tank.

A political unknown when made prime minister by Yeltsin last August, Putin secured the presidency with promises of a tough stand on corruption and a pledge to restore order across Russia's 11 time zones.

But shorn of a strong political base, the rookie head of state turned to the only network he knew -- the Federal Security Service (ex-KGB) he once ran -- to staff an alternative apparatus capable of carrying out his orders. Putin has packed the Security Council with trusted aides and converted the advisory body into an increasingly influential tool.

And he has appointed to the council his "Seven Samurai" special envoys, charged with ensuring the regions comply with federal laws. At least 10 governors have only been spared the personal attentions of federal prosecutors because of the immunity that goes with their seat in the upper house, a privilege now under threat.

But while the senators try to spin out the reform process, proposing a series of amendments that will effectively neuter the measures, analysts agree Putin has a brief window of opportunity to assert himself.

"Putin understands that the credit he was given in the election is not inexhaustible," said Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation. "If they (the laws on the regions) are not passed by July it will weaken Putin's position, showing that his authority is not strong enough to force parliament to pass his proposals quickly," he added.

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BBC

7 June, 2000

Chechnya: Destruction defying description

By James Rodgers

Flying over the mountains of the north Caucasus in a Russian army helicopter gives you a clear idea of the harshness of the terrain. The Chechen rebel fighters are at home among the cliffs and gorges which have so far remained unconquered by the Kremlin's forces. The pilots fly low in especially dangerous areas.

The closer to the ground they are, the less time there is for an enemy to take aim and fire.

Even in those regions which the Russians have controlled for months, the threat of ambush remains constant.

Anyone is a target

The Chechen rebels have a proven ability to strike at the Federal Army in areas Moscow claims to control.

At the end of May, the deputy civilian administrator in Chechnya, Sergei Zverev, and the Moscow-appointed deputy mayor of the capital Grozny, Nusreda Khabuseyeva were killed in an attack.

The soldiers know that if senior officials, accompanied by armed guards, are not safe, then the danger is even greater for them.

I was taken to an Army position in the Botlikh region of Dagestan. The mountains which towered above the tents and rocket launchers marked the border with Chechnya.

It was here that the Chechen rebels mounted the attack which began the war in August last year.

Helicopter gunships took off from a stony runway, the only flat area in sight.

The position was calm the day I visited, but the troops have no illusions. Their enemy could be concealed anywhere in the mountains above, ready to mount a surprise attack.

No end in sight

The commanding officer, Major General Georgy Iliadze, says that the conflict could go on for a long time yet.

"We've beaten the main bands, but we'll be fighting small groups for a minimum of another year or two," he says.

No soldier I spoke to thought the war would be over soon. The Kremlin's promises of a quick victory ring hollow.

The next day we travelled to the capital of Chechnya, Grozny.

Grozny in ruins

The scale of destruction defies description. People seeing the ruins for the first time silently stare, open-mouthed in astonishment.

I covered the first Chechen war in the mid 1990's. I thought then that no city could be more destroyed.

Five years later, Grozny is. In the centre, few buildings are still standing, and none is undamaged.

The Russian army will only take correspondents there for a few hours during the morning.

You travel in on an armoured personnel carrier, in the company of heavily armed troops.

We were told by the senior officer before our departure: 'The situation in Grozny is difficult. For your security, don't leave the group. And when we say it's time to leave, it's time to leave.' As one woman explained, the reason for their concern was apparent once we arrived.

"As soon as night falls, the war starts again," Groups of rebel fighters either sneak into the city, or emerge from hiding places in the ruins, to attack Russian guard posts.

Local residents say that the hours of darkness are filled with the sound of gunfire.

In these conditions, the Russian authorities' attempt to bring life back to normal is severely hampered.

With talks with the rebels ruled out by the Kremlin, and no conclusive military solution in sight, Chechnya is beginning to look increasingly like a huge fortress.

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#10

South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

June 8, 2000

[for personal use only]

Generals weary of Chechnya war

By FRED WEIR in Moscow

Military leaders are growing frustrated with the counter-insurgency in Chechnya and are signalling they expect the Kremlin to find a political exit soon.

"The politicians start the war, they should and must end it," General Gennady Troshev, commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, told the Interfax agency this week. "It is high time for politicians to jump in, they are losing time."

During the Chechen war, now entering its ninth month, the generals have repeatedly talked to the press of their differences with Moscow authorities - a sharp break with earlier Soviet and Russian military tradition.

But General Troshev appeared to go far beyond any previous remarks. He said Moscow had failed to come up with a political formula to secure victory, and proposed his own scheme. He said a referendum should be held in Chechnya to determine an interim leader, and proposed his own candidate, the pro-Moscow leader of the republic's Muslims, Mufti Akhmad-Khadzhi Kadyrov.

"All this needs to be done as soon as possible," he said. "And then those Chechens who are prepared to work constructively will establish peace in their own land."

The Mufti Kadyrov is one of a handful of prominent Chechens who have thrown in their lot with the Russians. Although Moscow claims these collaborators have a mass following among Chechens who are exhausted after years of war, isolation and disorder, many experts are doubtful.

"The rebels are able to keep fighting because they enjoy mass popular support," independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said. "If Chechen civilians didn't feed, help and hide the fighters, they would be isolated and wiped out in a few weeks."

General Troshev ruled out negotiations with Chechnya's elected President, Aslan Maskhadov.

Analysts say that Russia's military leaders are beginning to worry that the campaign they launched so enthusiastically last October will become bogged down. "The military point of view is that they have already won the war," said Alexander Golts, a defence expert with the weekly Itogi magazine. "They defeated the rebel army and occupied most of the territory of Chechnya. In the minds of the generals this is now a political problem and controlling the territory is a police operation. They don't understand why Russia's military forces are still down there taking casualties every day." The conflict has mutated from a war of positions between two recognisable armies into a classic guerilla struggle. Chechen rebels move around in the guise of civilians, then concentrate and strike vulnerable Russian targets. Dozens of Russian soldiers are killed every week in skilfully executed rebel ambushes, and experts say this could go on for years.

Yesterday the rebels staged their first suicide bomb attack. A spokesman said two women drove an explosives-laden truck into a Russian military building, killing 17 troops. A Kremlin spokesman confirmed the attack and said there were deaths.

"General Troshev knows that serious problems are ahead for the Russian army in Chechnya and that's why he's trying to pass the buck to the Kremlin," Mr Felgenhauer said. "But his plan to put the Mufti Kadyrov in charge of Chechnya is ridiculous. Kadyrov is a Russian proxy, who commands no fighters. On the other hand, it appears politically impossible to negotiate with President Maskhadov, whom the Russians denounce as a terrorist. So there seems to be no political solution."

Another sign that time might be running out for President Vladimir Putin to find a permanent solution is the slow but steady fall in public backing for the war. Two months ago opinion surveys showed more than two-thirds of Russians fully supported the Government's actions in Chechnya. But a poll conducted by the independent ROMIR agency last week found only 51.7 per cent still behind the war effort. The number opposing the campaign has jumped over the same period from less than a quarter to about a third. "Chechnya is a political time-bomb. Our government lacks any long-term strategy for bringing peace to the region and integrating it back into the Russian Federation," said Alexander Iskanderyan, director of the Centre for Caucasian Studies in Moscow. "You can't ask the military to solve problems that are political and social."

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#11

Jamestown Foundation Monitor

June 8, 2000

DEFENSE MINISTRY UNHAPPY WITH PROPOSED BUDGET CUTS. Russia's Defense Ministry is reported to be protesting the government's plans to trim defense spending in the state budget for the year 2001. According to reports published on June 1, the projected federal budget for 2001 currently envisions cutting funding for Russia's Defense and Interior Ministries, as well as the country's security agencies, from 29.2 percent of total budget allocations--the figure for this year--to 26.8 percent of expenditures in 2001. The Defense Ministry is reported to be claiming that any reductions in defense spending will undermine well-publicized efforts to reform the armed forces and to strengthen Russia's national defense. In an effort to allay such concerns, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Aleksandr Kudrin said, also on June 1, that the defense-spending portion of the budget in fact faces no such reductions. Kudrin said that the Russian government has set itself the task of ensuring that defense expenditures--including those being devoted to the war in Chechnya--are not reduced in 2001. He suggested that the projected cuts mentioned in news reports would actually come not from the budget of the Defense Ministry, but from spending previously allocated to the Interior Ministry and Russia's security agencies. One report quoted Kudrin as saying that expenditures for law enforcement activities and security are now rather high, and that they should therefore be reduced (Russian agencies, June 1).

Kudrin reemphasized these same points in an interview published yesterday by Krasnaya zvezda--the Defense Ministry's main newspaper. Kudrin said in that interview that national defense will actually receive an increase of some 30 billion rubles in 2001 over the figure for this year. At the same time, he also confirmed anew that overall spending for the "power-wielding block"--a Russian term for the army, police and security agencies--would indeed be cut from 29.2 percent of total spending to 26.8 percent (Itar-Tass, June 7).

It is difficult to know what to make of these plans. Russian President Vladimir Putin had emphasized again and again his intention to root out corruption and to restore law and order in Russia. It is difficult to see how he will accomplish this if he intends, in fact, to cut spending for the Interior Ministry. It is similarly difficult to imagine that budget cuts for Russia's various security agencies are in the offing. Putin is himself a career KGB officer and appears thus far in his short time as Russian leader to have emphasized his intention to increase the authority--and scope of activities--of the country's security establishment. Given that the security agencies also stand as one of Putin's key sources of political authority, it is difficult to imagine they he will back any significant cuts in their funding.

The Russian armed forces, meanwhile, which usually back the president, seem unlikely to react enthusiastically even to Kudrin's reassurances. Putin rose to power on promises of rebuilding Russia's military greatness, and the military leadership's wholehearted support for him was presumably based at least in part on the expectation that he would reverse Boris Yeltsin's policies and begin directing significantly more funding toward the armed forces. But that may not be the case. Even Putin's promise earlier this year of a 50 percent increase in the Russian defense procurement budget--while clearly welcomed at the Defense Ministry--did not in real terms amount to much of an improvement over the miserly budgets which had been a feature of the Yeltsin presidency. Kudrin's remarks this month now suggest that, while the Defense Ministry may emerge from the current budget debates in better shape than the police and security agencies, there is not going to be the sort of defense spending windfall that many in the military leadership had probably hoped for. Their reaction to this apparently emerging reality remains to be seen.

If comments by a top Defense Ministry official published yesterday are any indication, the military leadership is unlikely to stand by quietly as the current budget debate proceeds. Colonel General Anatoly Sitnov, head of the Defense Ministry's armaments department, complained in yesterday's article that the draft budget for 2001 stipulates cutting defense spending to 2.62 percent of Russian GDP. Sitnov stated baldly that the "Defense Ministry will not be able to achieve its objectives with the funding level stipulated by the [2001] budget." He also emphasized the fact that the political leadership has not yet disowned an earlier commitment by former President Boris Yeltsin to raise defense spending to at least 3.5 percent of Russian GDP (Vremya MN, June 7).

In fact, Yeltsin never fulfilled that pledge. What is interesting--but should not be surprising--is that, at this early stage at least, the battle over defense spending for 2001 appears to be shaping up in a fashion similar to that which occurred annually under Yeltsin. The point is that, for all Putin's rhetoric about the need to restore Russia's military greatness, he is likely to run up against many of the same economic constraints that confronted Yeltsin in his efforts to keep the military happy. Putin's spending dilemmas may be mitigated somewhat by the Russian economy's recent improved performance, but he still is clearly not going to be able to fully satisfy the wish lists of the Russian Defense Ministry or the armed forces' various service chiefs. Indeed, to a degree greater than was the case in conducting Russia's bloody war in Chechnya, Putin's political skills are likely to be tested in the battle over spending priorities among the Russian armed forces' various service branches, and between the army, the police and the security agencies.

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#12

Moscow Times

June 7, 2000

ESSAY: Plutonium Plan Will Be Nuclear Time Bomb

By Arjun Makhijani

Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland.

He contributed this essay to The Moscow Times.

President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Bill Clinton announced an agreement Sunday to put 34 metric tons each of surplus military plutonium into forms that cannot be used in nuclear weapons. The goal is a laudable one. There is general agreement that, now that the Cold War is over, both nations should reduce their military plutonium stocks. The agreement also heralds the intention to make plutonium as safe as possible from theft or illegal use in both countries.

Unfortunately, the agreement would achieve this goal in a way that compromises safety, environmental and nonproliferation goals. All of the surplus military plutonium in Russia would be made into a fuel for nuclear reactors (called mixed oxide or MOX fuel), mostly of the light-water reactor design. Most of the surplus U.S. plutonium would also be converted into MOX fuel; the rest would be immobilized in a ceramic form that would be protected by putting it in radioactive glass logs. Surprisingly, none of the Russian plutonium would be similarly immobilized; no infrastructure for immobilization would be built here under the agreement.

The vast majority of light-water reactors, in which most of the MOX fuel would be used, were designed to use uranium, not for MOX fuel. Several important differences between MOX fuel and low-enriched uranium fuel affect reactor safety; reactors that use plutonium fuel require more control elements than reactors that use uranium fuel. Hence, reactors designed to use uranium fuel may not be suitable for MOX fuel or may have to be modified. Some reactors may not be able to accommodate the needed modifications. Russian VVER-1000 reactors, which would be used in the program, have experienced significant problems just using the uranium fuel for which they were designed. These problems have been documented in a recent book by Vladimir Kuznetsov, a reactor expert who worked for many years for Gosatomnadzor, the federal nuclear regulatory agency. Use of MOX fuel in VVER-1000 reactors would greatly complicate the issues associated with the operation of these reactors.

Russia should undertake a thorough and open evaluation of MOX fuel-related safety issues. But it seems ill-equipped to do so. Gosatomnadzor appears to have far less authority over actual decision-making in regard to licensing and operation of facilities compared to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And while the NRC might seem a good model to Russians, it has so far not exercised adequate oversight on the U.S. MOX program, letting commercial interests dominate the process by allowing any reactor owners who so choose to bid for MOX fuel contracts. A prudent process first would have ruled out some reactors on the basis of design or other safety considerations.

Complicating matters, the Russian-U.S. agreement puts emphasis on the speed of disposition. This will put pressure on both nations to maximize plutonium fuel loading in reactors, possibly creating more safety problems. Speed would create pressures to license reactors, even when regulators have safety concerns. It is indicative of the low priority given to safety that such regulatory issues were not resolved before the presidential agreement. Reactor modifications could be expensive, and they will take time. The reactors would be shut during the period of modifications, making electricity purchases necessary, which means additional costs. Using MOX fuel would be more complex and dangerous, making the program more costly to manage. Furthermore, since the reactors will contain far more plutonium and similar transuranic elements, the consequences of an accident f should one occur f would be more severe than with uranium fuel. The Russian-U.S. agreement does not address most of these cost issues, except for the cost of reactor modifications. Hence, many of these costs would likely have to be borne by Russia.

Liability is also a major issue. The plutonium disposition budget for Russia makes no provision for it. This implies that Russia will bear the costs if an accident should occur in a light-water reactor using MOX fuel. But the state of the economy is such that Russia would not be able to cover such costs. (Even U.S. provisions for liability for its own reactors are grossly inadequate.) Even in better economic times, the resources of the Soviet Union were not adequate to meet the costs of the Chernobyl accident, a cost Ukraine and many other countries continue to bear. Remembering the grave damage that European and other countries suffered from Chernobyl, Europeans will surely ask whether provision for liability should be left to Russia.

Russia and the United States lack only a MOX fuel fabrication plant and some related processing facilities to complete the infrastructure for MOX fuel production. Once that is done, there will be an incentive to continue plutonium separation,which would entrench plutonium use. Also, Russia has the intention of using the MOX plant for plutonium separated from commercial spent fuel once the conversion of 34 metric tons to MOX is complete. Like weapons-grade plutonium, commercial plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons. A MOX program would put these materials on the roads and in commercial nuclear power plants. Unless steps are taken to militarize security during MOX production, transportation and storage, there will be a risk of diversion of weapons-usable, including weapons-grade, plutonium. The immobilization of plutonium would be a far better way to address the problem of surplus plutonium. During the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear power proponents dreamed that plutonium would soon power the world economy. Those dreams are over, killed by high costs and severe technical difficulties. Russia and the United States should not be using the end of the Cold War to subsidize the creation of a plutonium fuel infrastructure that is completely unjustifiable in commercial terms.

The agreement contains no provision for new financing of Russian plutonium disposition, though an existing $200 million in U.S. funds would be allocated for designing the Russian MOX plant. Russia and the United States will bring up the issue of financing in July at the Okinawa summit meeting for the Group of Seven Leading Industrialized Nations plus Russia. They will be trying to persuade the other members of the G-7 f Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan f to persuade the G-7 to put up the money for the Russian program. If the G-7 is willing to fund MOX fuel use, it should be even more willing to fund immobilization, which is a safer, faster, more economically efficient option.

More than 150 organizations and individuals from Russia, the United States and other countries sent a letter to presidents Putin and Clinton on June 1 urging them to adopt an immobilization plan. The two did not agree with the letter's signatories. We hope the other members of the G-7 will set plutonium disposition on a better course by rejecting the MOX plan and adopting immobilization instead.

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