#1
Jiang meets Putin in wake of Olympic glory

MOSCOW, July 15 (AFP) -
Bursting with pride after his nation's historic claim of the 2008 Olympics, Chinese President Jiang Zemin arrives in Moscow on Sunday for delicate talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

But while Jiang was pleased to visit the city where Beijing was awarded the big prize, Kremlin sources said the leaders would focus on a joint response to the successful weekend test of the disputed US missile defense shield.

Many observers here say that such a response will not be easy to come by, as splits between Moscow and Beijing have emerged on key issues.

After his arrival at 3:30 pm (1130 GMT), Jiang is expected to shake hands with International Olympic Committee representatives before resting. He is scheduled to meet with Putin in the Kremlin on Monday at noon.

While other details of the meeting remain sketchy, the two are set to sign a broad Good Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which would replace an outdated 1950 version that failed to prevent a 1969 border war.

In a vivid sign of the two giant nations' uneasy relations, no friendship treaty has been signed since.

Today, Moscow diplomats admit that they will struggle to present a united front with China against such burning issues as Saturday's US missile defense launch -- a test that the Kremlin met, at least initially, with deafening silence.

"A strategic partnership with China is not a union -- neither a civilian, nor a military one," noted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.

"Russia and China are very firmly following a 'free-hands' principle, and this includes international affairs," said Losyukov.

"It is absolutely wrong to say that the partnership between Russia and China is aimed against anyone in the West. The West must understand that there is a certain line that neither we nor the Chinese are willing to cross."

The comments are a far cry from Moscow's bullish optimism that preceded Putin's trip to Shanghai last month, which took place just days before the Russian leader faced off for the first time with US President George W. Bush in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.

Putin emerged from the Shanghai summit without securing support for the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile that slaps curbs on US missile defense shield testing.

Instantly, many saw this as a vital sign that China was upset with Russia's proposal to help build a limited missile shield that would cover Europe and even India.

China furiously opposes even a limited shield because -- if developed -- it could then be successfully used by its tiny arch-rival Taiwan, which Beijing still views as a renegade province.

But of equal concern to Moscow is an historic March 14 Chinese foreign ministry declaration stating that Beijing is far less concerned with the US missile shield than with regional air defense mechanisms of the type proposed by Russia.

"This is an incredibly serious statement because it means that China has abandoned the theory of mutually assured destruction" on which the ABM treaty is based, said Andrei Piontkovsky of Moscow's Center for Strategic Studies.

"This divergence in position is linked to China's own agenda," the analysts said.

"China and the US have 60 billion dollars in annual trade," or some 10 times that between Russia and China. "When there is such trade, who wants to count nuclear missiles," Piontkovsky remarked.

Indeed, Jiang in a recent interview with Russia's state media noted that after a slow start, China's relations with the United States were quickly warming.

"I am optimistic about the future of Chinese-US relations," Jiang said in remarks that were echoed a few days later by US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#2
The Russia Journal
July 13-19, 2001
Kursk mission won’t salvage truth
Crucial clues to the disaster are likely to remain on the seabed
By ALEXANDER GOLTS

At first glance, current operations in the Barents Sea provide a stark contrast to the tragic events of last August when the Kursk submarine sank. Back then, the authorities didn’t want to deal with the public and decided to ignore it. As a result, officials didn’t even try making their lies look like the truth.

President Vladimir Putin displayed great indifference to the events of that time. It’s enough to remember how he failed to cut short his break when the disaster struck, and his calm "It sank," in answer to Larry King’s question as to what happened to the submarine. Putin’s popularity took a dive as a result of the disaster.

But the Kremlin took notice. This time, with the first stage of operations to raise the Kursk under way, presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky, who is responsible for public relations, looks as important a participant in the events as top brass from the Navy and the representatives of Dutch company Mammoet.

The operation has an official Internet site (kursk.strana.ru), and Yastrzhembsky personally inspected the ship that will take journalists to the site of the operation, as well the international press center about to open in Murmansk.

The Kremlin spin doctors, along with the admirals, are willing to turn the operation into a breathtaking show. Officials aren’t hiding the fact that the first phase of the operation is complicated and extremely risky.

After examining the hull, divers will attach special robots to the submarine, which will cut the first section away from the rest of the vessel. But the first section contained powerful torpedoes and it’s not known if all of them were destroyed by the explosion that sank the submarine.

Another risk comes from the second and third sections, which contained 24 missiles that could have been displaced by the disaster. There’s no guarantee that torpedoes or missiles won’t be accidentally cut into during work to slice away the first section.

The North Sea Fleet command wants to add to the drama and show itself in the best light. It has dispatched a naval formation to the area comprising all the fleet’s most powerful ships. Twenty-three ships form the group, including the atomic cruiser Pyotr Veliky, the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov and two aircraft carriers.

The admirals have made meaningful hints about the importance of ensuring maximum security in the area. It’s not entirely clear what exactly needs protecting, however. If it’s military secrets the admirals have in mind, there can’t be many left on the Kursk after the Russians allowed foreign divers to train for the operation on the Oryol submarine, which is the same as the Kursk. The admirals are obviously just taking the opportunity to show the Kremlin that they know how to command large naval formations.

But all this flurry of activity could have another aim. Organizers are anxious to have everyone forget why the operation is being undertaken in the first place. Originally, officials said the submarine would be raised so as to establish exactly what caused it to sink. But if any part of the battered vessel can yield information on the disaster, it’s the first section – precisely the section that is to be left at the bottom of the sea.

The operation’s planners say there’s no other way to raise the submarine. They say the first section was most severely damaged during the explosion and would be likely to break off during the raising operation. Admiral Mikhail Barskov said that this "would upset the dynamic of the vessel’s rise."

Now, the admirals are saying that the first section will be raised at a later date in the distant future. It’s worth remembering here that Putin had said that the issue of personal responsibility of naval commanders would be decided only when the reasons for the disaster became clear. These reasons could now be left with the first section on the ocean floor. No one will be punished for what happened. Nor will Admiral Kuroyedov ever have to answer for his repeated assertions that the Kursk sunk after being hit by an American or British submarine.

The latest explanation for why this risky and complicated operation is necessary is that the Kursk sank in an area of busy shipping traffic and is a danger for cargo and fishing vessels. Of course, a sunk atomic submarine is never going to improve shipping safety, but the submarine’s reactor was flooded. Environmentalists worry, however, that the lifting operation could reactivate the reactor. The Norwegian government hasn’t received information from Russia guaranteeing the forthcoming operation’s safety.

Judging by the fact that they wanted to postpone the operation, members of the international consortium working on the project also have doubts about safety. But the admirals are in a hurry to carry out the salvage operation – an operation to salvage their uniforms.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#3
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
July 13, 2001
THE UNITED STATES ACCELERATES WITHDRAWAL FROM
THE ABM TREATY
Russia relies on negotiations
Author: Vadim Soloviov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
A WEEK AGO, WASHINGTON ALL BUT INFORMED MOSCOW THAT IT WILL WITHDRAW FROM THE 1972 ABM TREATY. A 24-PAGE MEMORANDUM WAS SENT TO ALL US EMBASSIES AROUND THE WORLD. THE UNITED STATES OPENLY ADMITS ITS PLANS TO DEPLOY A NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE WITH GROUND-BASED, AIRBORNE, AND SEA-BASED COMPONENTS.
Plans to start work in August on a new test site in Alaska

According to our sources, at least a week ago Washington as good as told Moscow that the United States will "break the terms of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972 in a matter of months". State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has publicly confirmed it. The State Department claims that a month ago Moscow was told that the United States would deploy an missile defense system "anyway".

A 24-page memorandum from Washington was sent to all US embassies around the world, including Moscow. The United States openly admits its plans to deploy a national missile defense with ground-based, airborne, and sea-based components. A multi-level shield is to be built over the next four years. It will include missiles launched from the ground, from ships, and airborne lasers. Seventeen tests will be organized over the next fourteen months, ten of which will test ground-based systems and seven of which will test naval components of the future national missile defense.

The first step will be taken as soon as August. Construction of a test site will begin near Fairbanks, Alaska. Five interceptors will be deployed there. The early warning radar at Cobra Dane in the Aleutian Islands will be upgraded as well. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that the construction project near Fairbanks will not be in violation of the ABM treaty "this year". The first tests of the future national missile defense are scheduled for late 2001 to early 2002. Over $8 billion will be allocated for the purpose. In other words, creation of a national missile defense is now an irreversible process.

Moscow remains composed. There are two significant aspects to what the US administration has been doing. Firstly, Washington is making this bold move in a desperate attempt to speed up revision of the ABM treaty. President Vladimir Putin emphasized recently that "updating" of the ABM treaty was not impossible. This was a promising gesture. This is where the matter rests, because Moscow accepts the possibility of some minor technical amendments in the ABM treaty, not any revision of the essence of the document. This means no national missile defenses, regardless of any "updating" of the ABM treaty.

Secondly, the moves the United States is planning with regard to the project are critical but not catastrophic. The ABM treaty permits deployment of up to 15 interceptors at existing missile defense test sites and test sites agreed upon additionally. Washington will not exceed this level until 2004. With certain reservations, building a new test site could fail to be considered as violation of the ABM treaty. It will depend on the signatories.

In other words, Washington has entered the narrow corridor separating participation in the ABM treaty from withdrawal. By doing so, it has set the agenda for the two military and diplomatic working groups which the Russian and American presidents agreed in Ljubljana to set up.

There is no longer any mystery about Russia's response to Washington's decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty. Just under two months ago, Putin described this response as "not very expensive, but effective". This will involve a range of measures centered around fitting Russian nuclear missiles with multiple warheads.

For the time being, however, Russian military-political circles will "try to bring the United States back into the ABM treaty" through negotiations. A new political initiative is being tested. It concerns negotiations on strategic stability among the five nuclear powers and UN Security Council permanent members (the Russian Federation, the United States, Britain, China, and France). The initiative aims to have the nuclear powers cut their nuclear arsenals - Russia and the United States to 1,500 warheads each - and to get the total number of warheads in all five states down to 4,000.

Experts doubt that the initiative will amount to anything. At the same time, Washington's moves to create a national missile defense are more dynamic, systematic, and persistent. The United States calls itself the world's only dominant force. Clinging to old methods and forms of international relations, Russia cannot find its new place in these changed geopolitical circumstances.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#4
Moscow Times
July 12, 2001
Endorsing War Crimes
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Last week in Moscow, French President Jacques Chirac said that Boris Yeltsin paved the way to democracy, and Vladimir Putin to economic reforms. Chirac stressed that Russia is going "the right way" and that the French government will facilitate investment in Russia. Chirac welcomed bilateral agreements in the fields of energy, aeronautics and space.

Also last week, U.S. President George W. Bush had a telephone chat with Putin and told reporters that "it's good for our nations, and it's good for the world for us to develop a good relationship."

But as the Western leaders were heaping compliments on the Kremlin, Russian troops were increasing the brutality of their attacks on civilians in Chechnya.

This was appeasement at its worst: Each endorsement of Putin was immediately translated into crimes against humanity, as thousands of new refugees fled Chechnya in terror.

At the beginning of Putin's war in the Caucasus the Kremlin erected a firewall of secrecy around Chechnya and did its best to suppress all information that could damage Russia's international image.

Now military officers are sometimes themselves admitting war crimes in Chechnya: There's no big deal in telling the truth, if Western leaders are deliberately turning a blind eye.

Last month, three-star General Leonid Zolotov — commander of one of Russia's most prestigious military schools, the Frunze Military Academy — published an article that analysed the tactics used by Russian troops in Chechnya.

Zolotov wrote that in 2000 in Grozny "incendiary bombs, incendiary cluster bombs and containers were extensively used to torch enemy-occupied objects and to destroy enemy manpower concentrations."

At the time of these air raids there were several thousand Chechen fighters in Grozny and up to 100,000 civilians. The Third Protocol of the 1980 Geneva Convention (signed and ratified by Russia) says: "It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons."

Concrete evidence has been gathered by journalists and human rights groups on the use of different air-delivered incendiary weapons, including "vacuum" or "fuel" bombs against Grozny and other Chechen towns and villages. There is also concrete evidence that hundreds of civilians, including women and children have been killed by such weapons — in fact scorched alive.

However, the true number of civilian casualties is not known. If ever the ruins of Grozny are examined by independent forensic investigators and Russian military witnesses questioned on the tonnage of illegal weapons used, the civilian war crimes death toll in Chechnya may grow into the thousands or even tens of thousands.

The use of prohibited incendiary weapons in violation of international agreements is a much more serious war crime than the abuse of civilians by troops or bombardments by "ordinary" bombs or shells. The Russian military knows that the use of incendiary weapons is severely limited by international agreements.

Such weapons are not part of the normal inventory of Russian units. Military sources say the orders to forgo international law on air-delivered incendiary weapons and attack towns and villages "came from the highest authorities."

It is a legal fact that by using incendiary weapons Russia as a state committed a war crime.

Western governments know the facts, but are indifferent, and this is constantly diminishing the morale of Russian troops and promoting new crimes.

Zolotov, who is not personally involved in planning operations and does not in fact approve the conduct of troops in Chechnya, agreed with me that attacking Grozny with incendiary weapons was a terrible war crime, but also implied that "war is a crime anyway."

The West is forcing the best of Russian generals to believe that war crimes are somehow acceptable.

Chirac in Moscow urged a political solution to the war in Chechnya, but mostly he was preoccupied with promoting multibillion contracts. Western greed is once again overshadowing all other considerations, as in the 1930s, when the West was investing in "stable" Nazi Germany.

Unscrupulous Westerners imply that today Russia "is a convalescent country," is "slowly maturing into a European democracy" and an "investment opportunity of the century."

But in the end, investors who support criminal regimes lose their money, which only serves them right.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent Moscow-based defense analyst. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#5
Russia: Analysis From Washington -- Demonizing Chechens
By Paul Goble

Washington, 13 July 2001 (RFE/RL) -- A recent study says the Russian government's negative portrayal of the Chechens during its military campaign in that North Caucasus republic has led to acts of discrimination and violence against ethnic Chechens across Russia.

That 18-page study, made public this week by the U.S.-based Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, documents what it says is official and popular discrimination against and mistreatment of Chechens in 26 regions of the Russian Federation since 1998. But it concludes that even this listing "probably represents the proverbial tip of the iceberg." The study concludes that widespread official tolerance for and even occasional open support of such discrimination encourages hate groups to act against Chechens and makes it difficult for ethnic Chechens to turn to the authorities for protection.

The authors of the UCSJ study, who normally focus on the state of anti-Semitism in Russia, say that they looked into the mistreatment of Chechens because once a government or community mistreats one group, it makes it more likely "that other groups, including Jews, may face similar persecution in the future."

The report suggests that anti-Chechen prejudices have a long history among Russians. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russians, especially in major cities like Moscow, came to view people from the Caucasus and especially the Chechens in extremely negative terms because groups from this region often appeared to dominate public markets and were widely assumed to dominate organized criminal groups there.

Russian officials sometimes played on these sentiments. In October 1993 Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov issued a decree calling for the expulsion from the city of Moscow of all "persons of Caucasus nationality." That decree, which was enforced by federal officials as well, is believed to have opened the door to exploitation and mistreatment of Chechens.

During the first Chechen war between 1994 and 1996, official and media comments against the Chechens were moderated by the extensive press coverage and by the actions of groups like the Soldiers' Mothers Committee which called attention to Russian brutality against the Chechens. But since the start of Russia's second Chechen campaign, the situation has changed.

On the one hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a series of comments about the Chechens that the UCSJ report says "was greeted with joy by Russia's hate groups." And on the other hand, the Kremlin has moved to control coverage of the war by among other things moving to take control of formerly independent media outlets and thus reducing the chance for people to present the Chechens in a more favorable light.

Events this week suggest that that situation may be about to change, at least in part. The acknowledgement by Russian commanders and Kremlin officials that Russian forces have engaged in atrocities in Chechnya has received widespread coverage and may cause some to reconsider their attitudes toward the Chechens.

But the UCSJ report says that the widespread Russian hostility to the Chechens that the Russian government has helped to promote is not likely to dissipate entirely and that in turn threatens other minorities in that country and hence the prospects for Russian democracy as a whole.

(The UCSJ Special Report, "Ethnic Persecution of Chechens in the Russian Federation" is available online at http://www.fsumonitor.com.)

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#6
50,000 Russian women are sex slaves in China, South Asia: report

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, July 14 (AFP) -
Russia's poverty-ridden far east is the main supplier of sex slaves for the Asian Pacific region, with over 50,000 women exploited in China and South-East Asian countries, according to experts here.

"The ease with which slaves are exported is astounding. A whole exporting system has been developed here," the region's deputy prosecutor general Konstantin Chaika lamented, adding that dozens of slave-traders from both Russia and China take part in the human trafficking.

It is almost impossible to find the women and return them home, even if their relatives promptly alert the law enforcement agencies, the head of the local search FSB security service search team, who identified himself as Alexei S., told AFP.

The sex slaves are often sold out of China and disappear without a trace.

"So far, the only example of success we have are the three girls who were returned home to Primorye from Myanmar," Alexei said, adding that the FSB security service had had to smuggle the girls out in secret after they spent three months in a brothel.

The girls left home in hopes of a high-paying job abroad, aided by a Russian employment agency that arranged their transport to China. However, once in China, their passports were taken away and the girls learned their fate.

In Myanmar, where the kidnapped women were sold, one of the three managed to make a call to her father, a well-known Primorye writer, who alerted the authorities.

But more often sex slaves vanish, beaten to death for disobedience, their bodies well hidden, Alexei said, adding that there are no official estimates of how many Russian women fell victim to such treatment.

In June, the Russian foreign ministry was told that three women, natives of Primorye, were hospitalized in Lupanshui, China, after they were cruelly beaten up by security guards in a bar where they were working.

Two of them, aged 20 and 21, died shortly afterwards, and the third is in critical condition, officials said.

However, the chances that the case will be investigated in China are slim, as many brothels and casinos are under the police's patronage, a self-named "sex tourist" told a local Internet site.

"But the main issue is not the Chinese, but our impotence and our state's indifference," the site said.

The problem was discussed this week at an international seminar aimed at developing a program to fight the slave trade, especially in Russia's far east's southernmost Primorye region.

Hosted by the Vladivostok organized crime research center and University of Washington's center on transnational crime and corruption studies, the seminar featured experts from all over Russia, Ukraine and the United States.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#7
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
July 14, 2001
Corruption still bane of business in Russia
By Janet McFarland

German watchdog group Transparency International released its annual corruption index two weeks ago, ranking Russia and several other former Soviet states among the most corrupt nations in the world.

Russia tied for 11th-worst place out of 91 countries included in the survey, earning a corruption score of 2.3 out of 10, barely beating notorious Indonesia and its 1.9 score. Ukraine was slightly worse than Russia, with a score of 2.1. A total of six former Soviet countries scored less than 3.0 out of 10.

Russia's slide into mafia-controlled chaos is news to no one. The initial burst of enthusiasm for Russia's attempts to transform itself into a functioning capitalist state has long since disappeared. Few foreign companies are willing to move into the Russian market these days, and corruption is the main reason.

Ten years ago, there were 35 Alberta-based companies active in Russia; today there are two. Randall Oliphant, chief executive officer of Toronto's Barrick Gold Corp., told reporters this spring: "We don't think Russia is a suitable environment to invest in nowadays." Those foreign companies that have stayed in Russia have become the world's canaries in the mine.

Calgary-based Norex Petroleum is the latest canary to succumb. Norex, which majority-owns Russian oil company Yugraneft, watched helplessly two weeks ago when its minority Russian partner Tyumen Oil sent heavily armed men into Yugraneft's Siberian head office and ordered all staff to leave. Tyumen then seized control of Yugraneft's nearby oil field, again banishing staff at gunpoint. This week, it took control of Yugraneft's $30-million (U.S.) bank account.

Norex CEO Alex Rotzang immediately received a Russian court order requesting that Tyumen remove its thugs from Yugraneft's offices in the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk. It hasn't worked, and Mr. Rotzang noted helplessly to a Globe reporter: "They have over 1,000 armed men around the city. That's more than the police have."

Those who promote investment in Russia have been quick to insist that Norex's case is not common, and that corruption is being cleaned up. But many isolated cases instead paint a disturbing pattern. Numerous Canadian companies -- most operating in the resource sector, where Russia's wealth is concentrated -- have found themselves muscled out of projects and forced to walk away from substantial investments. If Russia is becoming less corrupt, it's hard to see the signs from here.

Vancouver's Ivanhoe Energy lost oil field licences in a deal it claims amounted to an illegal takeover. Archangel Diamond Corp. says its Russian partner has breached a deal to give it a 40-per-cent stake in a joint venture, after Archangel had already invested $30-million (Canadian) in the project. Pan American Silver Corp. of Vancouver was muscled out of a Russian project and ended up writing off its $38-million investment. IMP Group of Halifax for years fought attempts to wrest away its investment in Moscow's Aerostar Hotel.

Transparency International chairman Peter Eigen argues Russia and other former Soviet countries must do far more to establish the rule of law in their countries. Such advice is dismissed by corrupt world leaders as either an unwelcome intrusion or an unrealistic luxury only available for rich countries. They fail to realize (or simply don't care) that transparency and legality are the fundamental keys to strengthening their economies.

Yet Transparency International's corruption index makes the compelling argument, with only a few exceptions, that corruption correlates closely with poverty. The four worst countries in the corruption index are Bangladesh, Nigeria, Uganda and Indonesia.

Indonesia, like Russia, has been a problem for Canadian companies because it has also actively sought foreign investment, but failed to protect it once it arrives.

Manulife Financial saw the problems first-hand last year when an unknown shell company emerged to accuse Manulife of fraud in the purchase of shares. Although this company showed nothing reasonable to substantiate the claim, police and prosecutors leapt on Manulife. At one point, a Manulife executive was held for three weeks without charges. Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank intervened to defend Manulife. Following revelations that a wealthy Jakarta businessman tried to solicit a $40-million (U.S.) payoff to settle the dispute, Manulife was finally declared innocent in May.

Still, thus far Russia's mining sector has proved the biggest trap for Canadians. Certainly it's now become clear that any foreign company choosing to operate in Russia is willing to accept the risk of complete financial loss. Companies have been amply warned, and it's now a simple case of buyer beware.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Ottawa in December urging Canadians to forge economic ties with his country. The idea is laughable. Mr. Putin must first rehabilitate Russia's corrupt bureaucracy, then its even more corrupt local politics, and then its yet more corrupt business sector. Allowing companies such as Norex to flounder with court rulings that are unenforceable against gangland-stle thugs is proof that Mr. Putin has no true commitment to support foreign investors.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#8
Izvestia
July 13, 2001
FSB ALLOWED TO REGISTER ANONYMOUS COMPLAINTS
Author: Ksenia Veretennikova
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
THE BOARD OF APPEAL OF THE RUSSIAN SUPREME COURT HAS ALLOWED THE FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE TO ACCEPT ANONYMOUS COMPLAINTS. THE APPEAL OF THE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP HAS BEEN REJECTED. HOWEVER, MANY PEOPLE STILL HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF THESE NEW RULES.

Will anonymous complaints to the FSB lead to a new wave of informers?

On July 12, 2001, the Board of Appeal of the Russian Supreme Court allowed the Federal Security Service (FSB) to accept anonymous complaints from ordinary citizens. Thus, the appeal of the For Human Rights group has been rejected. Human rights advocates wanted the court to cancel one of the items of the FSB instruction on procedures for considering complaints from citizens. In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the process of registering anonymous complaints does not constitute a violation of human rights.

Yevgeny Ikhlov, a member of For Human Rights, says: "Thirteen years ago the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued the decree on 'intensification of combating slander.' The decree has not been canceled, and this FSB regulation contravenes it. Besides, Article 110 of the Criminal-Procedural Code states that neither verbal not written complaints from citizens to law enforcement agencies may be anonymous. If the Interior Ministry receives an anonymous complaint, it checks the report and takes action to prevent a crime if this is warranted. However, the Interior Ministry does not register anonymous complaints. As for the FSB regulation, it implies that any operative search mechanisms, such as espionage, opening private mail, and searches, can be done on the basis of an anonymous complaint."

Human rights advocates fear that some other agencies may follow the FSB, which could generate a new wave of activity by "do-goodniks."

The FSB says that the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR determines the general principles for citizens appealing to law enforcement agencies, but the FSB instruction is only a technical document. FSB spokeswoman Tatiana Komarova drew the court's attention to the difference between the concepts of "registration" and "consideration." According to Komarova, the FSB registers anonymous complaints but does not consider them. This means that it is not watching anyone or tapping phones. FSB agents inform other law enforcement agencies about the "signals."

Sergei Churikov, who represented the FSB in the court, told us: "The FSB wants this registration only because it is convenient."

According to information presented at the hearing, last year 592 anonymous complaints were submitted to the FSB, and several dozen of them have proved to be true.

(Translated by Kirill Frolov)

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#9
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
July 13, 2001

GETTING READY FOR NATO'S ENLARGEMENT. A NATO naval squadron, the strongest to visit any of the three Baltic states since 1991, laid anchor at Klaipeda on July 6 and conducted exercises in Lithuania's territorial waters through July 12. Seven frigates--one each from the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, Holland, Spain and Portugal--as well as a Norwegian submarine, a giant British tanker, and helicopters borne by some of the frigates, participated in the exercise, joined by Lithuania's frigate Zemaitis.

The participating ships, with crews totaling more than 1,500, form part of a NATO force permanently on call for combat. The exercise, Cooperative Ocean 2001, featured inter alia the detection and inspection of potentially hostile ships, relief of friendly ships in distress, antisubmarine warfare, search and destroy operations, and exchanges of crews among allied ships. The Zemaitis demonstrated its antisubmarine capabilities using reactive depth charges. On July 12 the squadron headed for Gdynia to continue exercising in Poland's territorial waters.

The command of the joint naval squadron, Baltron, passed meanwhile from Latvia's Commander Andrejs Zvaigzne to Estonia's Lieutenant Commander Igor Schvede in accordance with the annual rotation procedure. On the occasion of the handover on July 10, Baltron officers and naval advisers from NATO countries favorably rated Baltron's progress in the three years since its creation. The successive annual plans focus on augmenting Baltron's capabilities and on ensuring the compatibility of its Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian elements with one another and with NATO's forces.

Concurrently, Russia's Baltic Fleet conducted a large-scale command-and-staff exercise in the Kaliningrad Region. Staffs of naval, ground, air force, air defense and border troop units--all forming part of that fleet's command structure--as well as unit staffs from the Leningrad military district participated in the war games. General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces, commanded the culminating phase of the exercise at the Fleet's headquarters in Baltiisk, Kaliningrad Region on July 8. That phase involved some fire practice. The scenario envisaged that Russian forces stop and destroy two NATO brigades that supposedly cross into that Russian exclave from Poland.

On the political front, Russian military officials and propagandists are moving to exploit an opening offered by Western critics of NATO's Baltic enlargement. That dwindling group of critics has lately emphasized the argument that the alliance's Baltic enlargement could destabilize, rather than stabilize the region, and that it would moreover undermine the "overall security in Europe" by antagonizing Russia. This thesis is in fact traceable to Moscow's own, early response to NATO's enlargement intentions a few years ago during Yevgeny Primakov's tenure in the Russian government. Subsequently, the Russian line sought on the whole to de-emphasize the threat implied in that early response. But the reappearance of that old thesis--albeit less crudely formulated--in the Western debate would seem to encourage Russian spokesmen to revert to old-style warnings.

That Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Main Department for International Military Cooperation, should issue such warnings in an Estonian press interview this week is hardly surprising. The reputed hardliner Ivashov, in fact, often articulates the official line. That has just been summed up as follows by Sergei Oznobishchev, director of the Institute for Strategic Assessments, in the governmental Rossiiskaya Gazeta: "Taking the Baltic states into the [NATO] Alliance would bring a landslide-like deterioration in relations between Russia and the West. It would also lead to such relations between the Baltic states and Russia as to prevent the Baltic states themselves from integrating with European structures. All Russian analysts are aware of this paradox. NATO membership will not enhance the Baltic states' security. On the contrary, it would generate additional problems through the deterioration in their relations with neighboring Russia."

Warnings of this type look like textbook cases of an insolvent threat. Their chief purpose is probably that of fueling objections within the West to the admission of the Baltic states into NATO--or even into the hypothetical security organization of the European Union, as the Moscow line also suggests. A dynamic can develop in which Moscow plays back its version of the Western Russia-Firsters' thesis, hoping to vindicate that thesis. Because Moscow's version involves warnings and threats, it can only inject unnecessary acrimony in the relations between the West and Russia. That result would be opposite to the one that Western critics of NATO's Baltic enlargement say they want to achieve (BNS, ELTA, July 6-12; Rossiiskaya Gazeta, July 7; Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, July 8-9; Eesti Ekspress cited by BNS, July 12; see the Monitor, March 16, April 11, May 14, June 11, 20, July 5; Fortnight in Review, April 13, June 22, July 6).

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#10
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
July 8, 2001
Special Report: Small Arms, Mass Destruction
Illegal Soviet Weapons Fuel Wars Around World
By Margaret Coker

Mogadishu, Somalia. Worldwide trade in illegal guns from the former Soviet Union is growing so fast that it is as serious a menace to the planet as the spread of nuclear and chemical weapons.

Weapons like the Russian-inspired Kalashnikov assault rifle fuel bloody clashes in developing nations from the Balkans to Africa to Colombia, killing or maiming millions.

To trace the devastating story of the small arms trade, a team of Atlanta Journal-Constitution correspondents traveled to 12 countries. They found an alarming lack of control over small arms stockpiles in the former Soviet bloc and an arms business run by brazen traffickers. Supplies of small arms have never been greater. And getting small arms has never been easier.

So easy that in the crowded, dusty aisles of the Bakhar Market in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, Kalashnikovs hang like sides of beef alongside tomatoes and live chickens. For $200 --- far below going rates of up to $2,500 in legal markets elsewhere --- buyers can take home one of these slightly used Russian-made AK-47s. Buy more and get a discount.

Today, 50 million AK-47s are in circulation throughout the world, enough to arm half of all U.S. households.

Such assault rifles and other small arms --- including rifles, hand-held rocket launchers, machine guns and pistols --- are responsible for 90 percent of all conflict-related deaths in the last decade, or about 3 million people, according to the International Red Cross.

Kalashnikovs and other small arms are nothing less than "weapons of mass destruction in slow motion," says U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Curbing their proliferation --- which Annan calls a key challenge in preventing conflict in the next century --- is the focus of a two-week United Nations conference starting Monday.

Assault rifles have "changed the face of war in Africa" and other developing countries, said Peter Marwa, a retired Kenyan army colonel turned arms analyst. Weary aid officials recite a litany of ills caused by easy access to small arms: psychological horrors experienced by child soldiers, loss of productivity due to a maimed and wounded work force, public money spent on arms instead of education and health care.

"The Kalashnikov is a weapon all fighters love," said Ali Stilla, an arms dealer in the Bakhar Market and father of three. "It will shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it."

These economy-class weapons also spur the global illegal arms market. Under international conventions, legal arms sales occur only between two national governments. The rebel organizations involved in today's low-level conflicts cannot buy guns legally.

The United States is by far the world's leading legal weapons dealer, with annual sales totaling $12 billion, but the bulk of illegal weapons sales come from former Soviet bloc countries where the Kalashnikov is produced, law enforcement officials and arms traffickers say.

International sanctions and other multinational efforts to halt illegal sales have failed to dent the extensive and shadowy trade in black market arms. As a result, expectations for the U.N. conference are low --- much like the prospects for the millions of civilians trapped by years of devastating civil war fueled by illegal arms sales.

During the heady, anything-goes chaos of the breakup of the Soviet Union, people with access to conventional weapons scrambled to get a piece of the illegal arms market, estimated at $8 billion annually and equivalent to a quarter of the world's global arms trade.

The days when superpower patrons shipped weapons to client states in exchange for political loyalty waned. With a mercenary view of the open market, ex-Soviet entrepreneurs quickly organized global businesses where arms could be swapped for drugs, diamonds or cash.

Local military commanders became the linchpin of this black market trade in the early 1990s, when plans to reorganize the Soviet army into national militaries for each of the newly independent states disintegrated into chaos. Many officers quit in disgust, not knowing with whom their loyalties should remain. Those who remained in the military found themselves in control of huge caches of weapons.

"Imagine what an enterprising soul could do in the confusion," said Moscow-based arms analyst Sergei Matvienko. In Soviet times, information on weapons numbers and locations "had been kept in Moscow, and suddenly, overnight, Moscow was located in a foreign country. No one there cared about the stockpiles in Kazakhstan, for example, and no one in Kazakhstan would ever know what had been in the stockpiles, let alone if anything were missing."

Arms ended up in the hands of hundreds of private security groups in Russia and Eastern Europe that had been organized to protect wealthy businessmen. They also were bought by rebels from Chechnya to Colombia who coveted the low cost and portability of AK-47s, mobile anti-aircraft launchers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and low-caliber ammunition.

By the mid-1990s, the business of stealing from stockpiles matured into a tightly organized black market. It was led by savvy Russian-speaking men who could cash in on their connections in the ex-Soviet military and in countries where it once had influence.

These traffickers say they concen- trated mostly on small arms because they were in demand. Selling them also enabled dealers to keep a low profile and stay out of competition with Russia's legal arms business, which sold big-ticket weapons like fighter planes, tanks and personnel carriers.

The supply of Kalashnikovs on the world market multiplied not only due to weak controls over stockpiles, but also thanks to a business blunder.

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Moscow failed to adequately license the AK-47 and the modifications designed by its inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov. Former Soviet satellite states that had manufactured weapons for the Red Army found themselves with a financial bonanza. They could produce the famed assault rifle without restrictions and without paying fees to Moscow or to the gun's creator.

Meanwhile, the plundering of Soviet stockpiles of small weapons continued virtually unnoticed and unpunished.

Sergei Fedkin, the acting head of Russia's Interior Ministry department for combating illegal arms trade and terrorism, said secrecy and corruption are to blame.

"I'm supposed to report on the state of the Defense Ministry stockpiles, but I have no access either to the stockpiles or to full statistics from the Defense Ministry," he said. "They give me a number of weapons every month that they say are unaccounted for. But never have I been given information about how many weapons exist in the stockpiles or how many stockpiles there are."

Statistics are elusive in the nations of the former Soviet Union, as they were when the Communists ruled. Numbers often are conjured up out of thin air to satisfy political whims or to fulfill, at least on paper, unrealistic economic plans. Arms production is no different.

Goskomsat, the successor agency to the Soviet statistics agency, says the number of small arms produced by the Soviet Union is still classified. The Russian Defense Ministry and the state arms export agency, Rosoboronexport, say the same is true of post-Soviet production. No Russian or U.S. think tank knows the answer. Military attaches in Moscow say they don't either.

In fact, none of the arms control treaties and military cooperation agreements signed between Moscow and Western capitals require small arms to be counted, according to arms control experts.

"The West was worried about nuclear missiles, tanks and aircraft, not hand-held weapons," said Dosim Sapayev, an analyst from the International War and Peace Institute, a London-based think tank.

Without accurate statistics, there can be no adequate controls. And without adequate controls, corruption flourishes, and secret arms transfers are easily carried out.

One such instance occurred in February, when the Anastasia, a freighter flying the flag of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, set sail from the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Oktyabarskii and docked at Spain's Canary Islands to refuel.

Its manifest said it was carrying auto parts, but the destination was illegible. When the port authority gained access to the ship, investigators found 650 tons of assault rifles, ammunition and infantry gear.

After Spanish officials complained, Rosoboronexport claimed the shipment was part of a legal sale from Moscow to Angola. The Anastasia was cleared to leave port once the ship's captain had paid a small fine. After its departure, Spanish officials said they had no legal basis to monitor its journey, and the ship's owners could not be found in the Georgian town where it was registered.

Rosoboronexport officials, agreeing to talk only after the ship had sailed, said the details of the deal were "a commercial secret." When pressed on whether the sale was to the government of Angola or the rebel group UNITA, the agency refused further comment. UNITA is under international sanctions, which makes arms shipments to the rebels illegal.

The main destinations for the Kalashnikov are developing nations where central governments are weak and civil conflict is rife.

Russian black market arms dealers say they are able to complete their deals --- including shipping and customs clearances --- by paying modest bribes, usually less than 10 percent of the deal. This low-cost process has fueled illegal arms sales over the past decade to UNITA, Somali warlords, Kosovar liberation fighters and Colombian narco-traffickers, according to intelligence officials, diplomats and police authorities investigating separate incidents in each country.

"The results have been horrendous," said Marwa, the retired Kenyan colonel, who is now with the Bonn International Center for Conversion and International Resource Group, a German arms control organization.

Meanwhile at Mogadishu's Bakhar Market, the sales go on.

In its own way way, Somalia shows the vexing realities of a country overrun by guns and a populace that lives by the gun. Somalia not only tolerates places like Bakhar, but the population views them as necessary.

"For Bakhar to shut down, we need to see a change in attitude about fighting," said Abdiqasim Salad Hasan, president of Somalia's transitional government. "Only if there is no more conflict will there be no more guns. But as long as people need to defend themselves, Bakhar will remain open."

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION


#11
Moskovsky Komsomolets
July 10, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
NO MORE SUPERPOWERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

What are the probable results of the strengthening of China? How will the status of Russia and America change"? Zbigniew BRZEZINSKI, national security advisor of an ex-President of the U.S., and Yevgeny PRIMAKOV, ex-Prime Minister of Russia, offer their answers to these and other questions.

Question: Could we say that China has completely replaced Russia as America's main adversary in the world?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: No, it would be incorrect to say so. The U.S. does not regard either China or Russia as its "main adversary."

Yevgeny Primakov: No, I do not think so at this stage. Time will show what will happen in the future.

Question: The political and economic might of China does not accord yet with the size of its population. When will China reach the peak of its might? How will the line-up of forces change on the world scene after that?

Z.B.: In the next twenty years China will be an increasingly important regional power but not a world force yet. Its progress is very impressive, indeed, and it may continue. Even now the Chinese economy is five times as big as the Russian economy. Depending on the way you count, it is the world's third or second economy.

Y.P.: This will undoubtedly happen this century, probably, in its first half. But there will never be a new situation when two powerful world forces will vie with each. No one will dominate on a unilateral basis, either.

Question: A greater part of the second half of the 20th century was an era of global confrontation between the USSR and the U.S. Can the 21st century become the time of a big conflict between America and China?

Z.B.: I doubt that a big conflict between America and China is possible. For many years to come China's development will be far behind that of the more advanced societies. This will curtail Chinese pretensions. What is more, China to a very high degree depends on world trade in its southern ports. It is more likely that Chinese influence will grow in the North and the West.

Y.P.: I do not think this will happen. The future is sure to confirm the correctness of our forecasts that the world system will be multi-polar. Even if China and the U.S. become the strongest poles of the future world order and there are some differences between them, they will be connected and mutually deterred by many things, as ever.

Question: Hardly any country has thus far been able to stay a world superpower for more than a hundred years. Could China take over America's role of the main global force?

Z.B.: I think the concept of the superpower will eventually become obsolete. That is why in my works I have called the U.S. "the first, sole and, probably, last superpower".

Y.P.: No country is a superpower any longer. I do not think China would be able to become a superpower in the future. A superpower is a category, which has been obliterated together with the Cold War era. It is only possible to compare the qualitative indicators of different countries. In this context, the hierarchy can change.

Question: Some members of Russia's elite say in private conversations that in a long-term perspective Russia has only one choice - to become a junior partner of either America or China. Do you agree with this?

Z.B.: This wording is probably too harsh and too acute. The best choice for Russia would be to become connected one way or another with the Euro-Atlantic community based on an expanded European Union and NATO. In that case Russia can be an important partner.

Y.P.: I categorically disagree with this. Russia has an independent role to play. Due to its history, potential and possibilities, it cannot be the one led by others.

Question: China suffers from the surplus of population and the shortage of land. Russia's problems are just the other way around. Does this mean that Chinese expansion is inevitable?

Z.B.: It is not inevitable at all. Everything depends on whether Russia dares to have close ties with the most modern, advanced and powerful force in the world - the Euro-Atlantic community.

Y.P.: It is a very complicated question. Indeed, we are two very different powers. What is more, many of Russia's scarcely populated territories are precisely in the regions adjacent to China. Under these circumstances, a great deal will depend on how prudent our migration policy will be.

Question: The number of illegal Chinese immigrants keeps growing in Russia's Far East. Are there any ways to effectively block this wave?

Z.B.: The U.S. Mexican experience makes the affirmative answer to this question rather unlikely.

Y.P.: It is first of all necessary to create social conditions for the movement of Russian settlement to the regions that are close to China. It would also be worthwhile to think of conditions for dosed and goal oriented immigration to these regions of people from neighbouring countries.

We should also study the experience of other countries. About a million people come to the U.S. from Latin America alone each year. Many of them are only seasonal workers. But specialists who are needed and people who prove to be good workers soon get advantages such as, for instance, the Green Card.

Question: In 1969 the Chinese attempted to seize part of our territory by force. Can anything of the kind be repeated in the future?

Z.B.: The Chinese believed they were not seizing Russian lands but were regaining what had always belonged to them.

Y.P.: I do not think that a conflict like the one on Damansky Island can happen ever again.

Question: How do you appraise Moscow's present policy toward China and to the U.S.? Should anything be changed?

Z.B.: In my opinion, Moscow's attempts to bring pressure to bear on America by playing the card of Russian-Chinese alliance are childishly naive.

Y.P.: Nothing should be changed. We ought to go on with a diversified foreign policy designed to maintain good relations with China and the U.S. alike.

Question: Some experts have estimated that in fifteen years China's military might could be equal to the U.S. military potential. How real is an armed conflict between these two countries?

Z.B.: I think this analysis is absolutely incorrect.

Y.P.: A comparison of the countries' military might is not sufficient to draw the conclusion about a possible armed conflict. The experience of the past shows that reaching the same level of military might can, on the contrary, stabilize their relations.

Question: What are the strategic goals of China's leaders concerning Russia? How do they envisage the future role of their country in the world arena?

Z.B.: China can become a very important regional power with a growing role in the world only if its economic growth continues and democratization of its political system begins.

Y.P.: It would be more appropriate to address this question to the Chinese leaders.

Question: What are the main internal threats to Russia, China and the U.S.?

Z.B.: The main threat to these three countries is international stability.

Y.P.: Separatism is the main threat to Russia and China. The U.S. does not have an internal threat on such a scale.

Question: Is Russia's unprecedented decline in the 1990s of a temporary character or can it lose for ever the status of a great power, just as Spain lost such a status in the 17th century?

Z.B.: Its present decline can be temporary. But there is no ground to expect Russia to regain the status of a great power, comparable with that of the USSR in its time, in the foreseeable future. The Soviet Union's status was an illusion in many respects. It simply happened that Soviet rivalry with the U.S. buttressed up by nuclear weaponry and prompted by dogmatic ideology coincided with a decline of power in European countries, China and Japan. If Russia becomes a country with a successful market economy and stable democracy, it can also become a prominent regional power. But this might not happen in the next few decades.

Y.P.: I am sufficiently optimistic in this respect. And my optimism is not prompted by street patriotism. Developments show that Russia's Western partners look forward to its participation in world processes. Even when weakened and economically inferior to other countries, Russia, nonetheless, remains a partner playing a priority role.

Question: How do you appraise the current situation in Russia? Do we continue to slide downhill pell-mell or has the process of our recovery begun?

Z.B.: The situation is contradictory. A certain level of social and political recovery has already been reached, but there is no democratization on a political plane. Nostalgia for the imperial status distracts the attention of the country's leaders from the truly important questions. The war against Chechnya, for instance, contaminates Russian politics and tarnishes your image abroad.

Y.P.: Recovery has already begun. This does not mean, however, that we will continue going straight ahead. There can be some rolling back and even backward movement. There is a chance, but whether it will be used or not is a big question.

Question: Mr. Brzezinski has the reputation of an anti-Russian personality in our country. Is such an image legitimate?

Z.B.: Those who are outspoken and do not beat about the diplomatic bush are often regarded as enemies. There is not a single anti-Russian statement in my works. I wrote about Russians as the people who probably suffered more than any other people did in the 20th century. I think that the Soviet system was immoral and criminal. I am sure that now that the empire established by czars is dead the Russian people have a much better outlook for the future. Do such views make me a Russo-phobic person?

Y.P.: Together with Zbigniew I have recently taken part in a Round Table organized by the French parliament. He started his statement approximately as follows: "Primakov used to regard me as an agent of imperialism. Once, when he was the foreign intelligence chief, he invited me to a lunch. And we had a very nice lunch together!" I think the evolution described by Brzezinski has really taken place. "But even when I invited you to a lunch, I did not regard you as an agent of mine," I joked back at him.

Question: How effective has Putin proved to be as the leader of Russia? What are his mistakes and his achievements?

Z.B.: His main achievement is the feeling of greater stability. His main weak point is insufficient attention to democracy, the lack of a serious foreign policy and his anti-Chechen obsession.

Y.P.: I think Putin has already proved the effectiveness of his course, which serves the interests of Russia. It goes without saying that he is breaking away from the group of people who promoted him as Yeltsin's successor. He now makes many things that are directly opposite to the course Yeltsin pursued. Putin's difficulties are largely due to the fact that many people from his inner circle are insufficiently professional. But some Kremlin professionals work against the President.

Question: Is the period of frosts over in Russian-American relations? What were the root causes of cooling in these relations?

Z.B.: The causes for the cooling are some of the things which Russia did not very long ago and which I have already mentioned. In addition, the delusions of the Clinton Administration as to how far Russia has gone on a course to a genuine democracy and market economy had their role to play.

Y.P.: No one can guarantee that the period of frosts is over. The four seasons of the year keep following one another but summer can be cool and rainy and winter can be warm. I think there were two causes for the cooling. One was the momentum of the American election campaign, when the new Washington Administration rejected all the positive things worked out by its predecessors. The other was that the political course of the new Administration was not shaped at once. Bush Sr. with whom I met in Athens not very long ago, reminded me that in his time it took from four to six months to shape a Russian policy.

Question: Will the 21st century be more tranquil than the previous century?

Z.B.: Probably, it will. But all depends on how prudently all - the Russians, Chinese, Europeans and the others - will act.

Y.P.: Yes, it will, with God's help.

TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    CDI RUSSIA WEEKLY HOME    CDI HOME