CDI Russia Weekly-#181 23 November 2001 Edited by David Johnson Center for Defense Information 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington DC 20036 phone: 202-332-0600; fax:202-462-4559 djohnson@cdi.org Happy Thanksgiving! The CDI Russia Weekly is an e-mail newsletter that carries news and analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, economic, social, military, and foreign policy issues. With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation, CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education organization. CDI Russia Home Page (with archive): http://www.cdi.org/russia/ Visit CDI's web site: http://www.cdi.org Contents: 1. AFP: NATO chief offers Russia new post-Cold War partnership. 2. Interfax: Russia not interested in NATO membership, says Putin. 3. Interfax: Putin hopeful of "long-term partnership" between Russia and USA. 4. Moscow Times: Pavel Felgenhauer, Taliban Won't Be Pushover. 5. Moscow Times: Megan Twohey, Russia, U.S. Look For Place In Kabul. 6. RFE/RL: Francesca Mereu, Russia: Forum Aims To Foster Conditions For Civic Society. 7. Christian Science Monitor: Daniel Schorr, Dust off those reports on nuclear threats. 8. UPI: Putin OK's plan to cancel conscription. 9. BBC Monitoring: Russia's Putin reportedly approves plan to abolish military draft by 2010. 10. Moskovsky Komsomolets: Viktor Sokirko, IN CAMOUFLAGE. Putin loves the army, but his love brings few benefits. 11. Asia Times: Sergei Blagov, Post-Soviet groupings eye Central Asian security. 12. Ekspert: Yevgeny Verlin, SMILES DO NOT SOLVE PROBLEMS. Washington still has to show it can take Russia's interests into account. ******* #1 NATO chief offers Russia new post-Cold War partnership AFP November 23, 2001 NATO Secretary General George Robertson promised Russia a new post-Cold war partnership as he met Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to discuss giving Moscow an unprecedented voice in Western military affairs. "Once again we are in a coalition against a common enemy, the common enemy of global terrorism," he said at the beginning of the talks. Western nations and Moscow, bitter foes for four decades during the Cold War, had "wasted an opportunity" after fighting Nazi Germany together in World War II. "You and I have an obligation to build something better and more permanent. We cannot build the security of future without Russia being an intimate partner of that relationhip," said Robertson. Ivanov told the NATO chief that his visit came "at an interesting time because modern threats are pushing us towards new levels of cooperation," with Russia a staunch ally in the US-led anti-terrorism coalition. "As Russia has underlined many times, Russia is prepared for cooperation on an equal basis," said the Russian defence minister, who accepted an invitation to visit NATO headquarters in Brussels next month. Ivanov pointed to three fields of cooperation: terrorism, non-proliferation, and the drugs trade. But in signs of continued tensions over contested US plans for a national missile defence system, he told Robertson that "no country can defend by surrounding itself with a fence, no matter how high that fence is." In a symbolic start to his three-day visit, Robertson earlier on Thursday laid a wreath at a World War II memorial in the southern city of Volgograd. The Soviet Red Army turned away Nazi Germany forces in the city, then known as Stalingrad, in a horrific battle that marked the last time Moscow and Western allies fought a common enemy and won. Ahead of Thursday's talks, Russia's defense minister declared that Moscow was seeking the "right to a voice" within the Atlantic alliance following the West's warm reception of the Kremlin's cooperation with the US-led campaign. However Washington and Moscow still have to surmount serious disagreements on the defense front, including the Alliance's planned expansion into the Baltics and southeastern Europe. Ivanov said on the eve of Robertson's visit many of these issues could be resolved if Moscow were given the "right to a voice" within NATO. He argued that the current Permanent Joint Council (PJC) set up between Moscow and NATO in 1997 should be dissolved and replaced by a new entity that treated Moscow as an equal. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has suggested creating a new joint council opening new possibilities for decision-making and joint action in trouble spots of common concern like the Balkans. Blair stressed that NATO should not grant Russia full membership but still take steps to recognize Moscow's contribution to international security following the September 11 attacks. ****** #2 Russia not interested in NATO membership, says Putin Interfax Moscow, 22 November: "Russia does not intend to line up to be accepted into NATO," Russian President Vladimir Putin said while meeting members of the Federal Assembly's international [affairs] committees in the Kremlin on Thursday [22 November]. "Russia's economic, scientific-technical, human, military and territorial potential makes it a self-sufficient state that is able to defend itself," the president said. At the same time, Putin said that now that the situation in the world has changed Russia is willing to "positively and constructively cooperate not only with all countries, but also with international organizations, especially in the security sphere". "We are ready to bring our positions closer to those of NATO in many areas to the extent to which the alliance itself is ready for this," Putin said. However, "Russia's national interests must also be considered," he said. Commenting on the results of the summit that recently took place in the USA, Putin said that US President George W. Bush "was very responsive to our ideas on the creation of new mechanisms for making joint decisions and implementing them in the "20" format". President Bush is willing to discuss these ideas with US and NATO allies. ****** #3 Putin hopeful of "long-term partnership" between Russia and USA Interfax Moscow, 22 November: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday [22 November] that Russian-US relations are now undergoing a qualitative change. During a meeting in the Kremlin with the international affairs committees of both houses of Russia's parliament, Putin stressed "the increased level of mutual understanding and confidence" between Moscow and Washington. "I think those who see a tactical rapprochement in our mutual relations caused by the recent events are deeply deluded. What is on the agenda is a programme for long-term partnership, and this is our mutual position," he said. This, he said, was largely the result of global changes that could not be ignored. "On the contrary, they must be taken into account if we want to create a favourable climate around the Russian Federation, a climate that would enable us to develop our productive forces, our economy, and this is the number one task for us," Putin said. ******* #4 Moscow Times November 22, 2001 Taliban Won't Be Pushover By Pavel Felgenhauer In one week, the situation in Afghanistan has changed dramatically. The radical Muslim Taliban militia that controlled up to 90 percent of Afghan territory, has collapsed and abandoned nearly all major cities, including the capital Kabul. But are the Taliban and its foreign supporters -- Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaida terrorist organization -- truly on the verge of extinction? The Taliban ruled Afghanistan ruthlessly. Life was miserable and made even worse by a terrible drought. Bin Laden and his men were genuinely hated by most Afghans as foreigners mingling in local affairs. However, the apparent fall of the Taliban was not the result of a popular revolution, nor was it the direct result of an offensive by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. The Taliban forces withdrew from Kabul and from several other major cities hours or sometimes days before the first Northern Alliance patrols arrived. The U.S. air campaign was, of course, a decisive factor. Carpet bombing decimated the best Taliban troops holding entrenched positions and they were unable to hit back at the high-flying planes. Afghanistan is not an industrialized country. It's even hard to call it "preindustrial." The rules of war in Europe do not apply in Afghanistan. The major cities are not a source of military strength, are not economic centers and do not produce wealth or armaments to run a war. The cities of Afghanistan are not a strategic asset, but rather a liability, as the Russians found out in the 1980s, and as the present anti-terrorist coalition will soon find out to their regret. The Taliban were not only decimated by bombing, they were also running out of food. Two weeks ago the Taliban tried to stop volunteers from Pakistan crossing the border to fight, because there were not sufficient provisions to keep them through the winter. Presumably there was no food for the major cities, as delivery of international aid was hampered by U.S. bombing, and hunger could have caused a genuine anti-Taliban revolution. Now feeding the Afghan population is the sole political and logistical responsibility of the U.S.-led coalition. If there are food riots, they will be anti-Western in character. The true source of military and economic power in Afghanistan lies in the countryside, where opium poppies are grown. Even more important (and profitable) is the control of export routes by which Afghan heroin reaches Europe and the United States. By withdrawing from the major cities, the Taliban have preserved a large force of dedicated fighters. This puts the Taliban and al-Qaida in a strong position to dominate the heroin trade following the fall of their government. Last year, the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, issued an order banning poppy growing, and only the Northern Alliance, reportedly, continued to produce and export drugs via Tajikistan and Russia. It is also reported that most of the previous year's harvest of opium has been stockpiled in Taliban hideouts near the Pakistani border. Now the Taliban -- no longer a government seeking international recognition but an anti-Western guerrilla force -- can go straight into big business, making millions, if not billions of dollars from the heroin trade. Drug money will support an unending guerrilla campaign against the U.S.-led peacekeeping force and there will be enough left for al-Qaida to run its international terrorist operations. Also, the Taliban now have the "infidels" where they want them -- not up in the sky, but on the ground in Afghanistan. It's now clear that Afghanistan will split into a maze of warlord-led tribal fiefdoms -- each existing almost entirely on opium growing and the looting of international aid -- with a weak figurehead central government in Kabul. The loose multinational peacekeeping force that is now being deployed in Afghanistan will hardly be able to cope with the problems. Even destroying the poppy fields from the sky will not be easy, since a lot will probably be grown by official Western allies from the Northern Alliance or Pushtun tribes that claim to be anti-Taliban. The main problem faced by the Russian military in Afghanistan was that they never knew for sure who was their ally and who not. The Russians bombed all and soon all were indeed enemies. Even if the U.S.-led allies are lucky and succeed in killing Omar and bin Laden in the coming days or weeks, this will hardly prevent the emergence of a bloody quagmire in Afghanistan with a lethal mix of radical Islam, narcotics trading and international terrorism. Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. ******* #5 Moscow Times November 22, 2001 Russia, U.S. Look For Place In Kabul By Megan Twohey Staff Writer What speaks louder in Afghanistan -- weapons or money? The answer could be key in deciding whether Russia, which has been arming the opposition for years, or the United States with hundreds of millions of dollars on offer will have a stronger sway over the allegiances of the new Afghan government. Should the new government that takes shape be pro-Western, Russia, in a worse-case scenario, could find its cashcow oil and gas industries shaken, some analysts said. Western companies could win approval to build pipelines across Afghanistan that would end Russia's near-monopolistic grip on lucrative Caspian energy shipments. For now, however, unity is the theme being invoked by Russian and U.S. officials working to bring democracy to Afghanistan. Putting years of discord about Afghan politics behind them, Moscow and Washington in recent weeks have found common ground on a new Afghan administration, agreeing that it should be a coalition representing all of the country's ethnic segments, including the majority Pashtun group. Members of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban would be excluded. Russia wants "a coalition of all nationalities and peoples living on Afghan territory without any discrimination -- with one exception, discrimination against the Taliban," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday, reiterating earlier Russian remarks. The United States and Russia sent special envoys to Kabul this week to work with the Northern Alliance, which now controls at much of the country, on setting up a post-Taliban government. United Nations officials are also participating in the talks. Their meetings have resulted in an agreement from the Northern Alliance to meet for an all-Afghan conference in Berlin next week to build a provisional council that would pave the way for a formal government. "It will be a broad-based government looking after the interests of all ethnic groups," Russia's envoy to Kabul, Alexander Oblov, said after talks with Northern Alliance leaders Tuesday. Although Russia and the United States say they will not try to create the government, they both would certainly like to influence it. Russia has for decades had a vested interest in the country in its backyard. The Kremlin long sought to keep pro-Moscow Afghan leaders in power in order to maintain peace in Afghanistan. The lack of such a leader led to the disastrous Afghan War after which Soviet soldiers withdrew in defeat. The last pro-Moscow leader, President Najibullah, was executed by the Taliban when they seized Kabul in 1996. In recent years Moscow has been providing the Northern Alliance with guns, tanks and other weapons for its fight against the Taliban. The arms shipments are continuing to this day, and the Kremlin has signaled that it has no plans to stop. The U.S. government, in contrast, has done relatively little in Afghanistan since the Soviet forces withdrew in defeat. That all changed with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, when the White House pinned the blame on Osama bin Laden and leaders of his al-Qaida network, believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. Two months of U.S-led air strikes against the Taliban have done what the Northern Alliance couldn't do with Russian weapons alone -- provided the extra muscle needed to retake much of Afghanistan. Arms and ammunition have had their place, but what the country really needs now is money for reconstruction, analysts said. "The only way to underpin discussions of democracy is to pour billions and billions of dollars into Afghanistan," said Thomas Withington, a research associate at the Center for Defense Studies at King's College in London. "In order to drag it back into civilization, you have to essentially build the country from scratch." The United States is more than ready to lend a helping hand. U.S. President George W. Bush last month committed $320 million in assistance to Afghanistan. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department held a conference of representatives from 21 nations and the European Union to discuss further assistance. It was the first step in what is expected to be a long-haul effort to rebuild the country. "We will demonstrate to the world that not only we care, but we know how to change conditions quickly in a way that makes a difference," U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said. Russia, with financial concerns of its own, is unlikely to offer to chip in. "I can't imagine how Russia can participate in an economic reconstruction," said Alexei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center. "The Northern Alliance leaders can take assistance from anyone now. But they will prefer not to deal with Russia and to organize their coalition based on the interests of the West, especially the United States," Malashenko said. U.S. and Russian officials currently seem to see eye-to-eye on resolving the conflict, but what would happen once an Afghan government is set up is anybody's guess. As Alex Vatanka, editor of Jane's Sentinel Russia CIS, sees it, the sticking point may well be Caspian energy. "U.S. and Russian interests could diverge over Caspian oil," Vatanka said by telephone from London. "Russia has been persisting in having oil imported westward from the Caucasus. A stable government in Afghanistan would mean that the U.S. could get away with having its oil companies operating from there and Pakistan. What will happen to the interests of Russian oil?" Malashenko said any U.S.-led economic recovery plan in Afghanistan would likely include an American-financed pipeline. "A gas pipeline is a key point. Its construction would create a huge infrastructure," Malashenko said. "Russia has wanted all the gas and oil pipelines to go through Russia," he added. "Now a new line could be opened in another direction, which would be a big step in the redistribution of energy in the region." Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation in Washington offered a similar prediction, pointing out that U.S. company Unocal just four years ago courted Kabul over such a project. Unocal in 1997 put together a consortium to build a $2 billion pipeline through the country. "As long as the Taliban was in power, U.S. plans to build a pipeline were a pipe dream," Cohen said. "However, with stability returning to Afghanistan, Unocal or other energy companies could revive the project." Such a pipeline could be build from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian or Pakistani markets, he said. However, energy experts in Moscow said such predictions were off the mark. "I'd be surprised if after 20 years of war the U.S. would want to build a pipeline in Afghanistan," said Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research for United Financial Group. Also, Washington is unlikely to want to disrupt its increasingly close relationship with Moscow, O'Sullivan said. Even if such a pipeline were built, it would be years before it was completed. Analysts agreed the odds are not good that peace would last long enough in a country like Afghanistan to allow large undertakings like pipelines. Ethnic and religious divisions have destroyed previous attempts to create broad-based governments in Kabul. "The track record is poor when it comes to implementing a peace plan for Afghanistan," Vatanka said. "We'll have to wait and see what happens after the conference in Berlin." ******* #6 Russia: Forum Aims To Foster Conditions For Civic Society By Francesca Mereu Thousands of members of Russia's civic and human rights organizations gathered in Moscow yesterday for the opening of a two-day Kremlin-sponsored Civic Forum. President Vladimir Putin said the government is ready to work with the public to create a better civic life in Russia. But many activists aren't convinced the government's attitude toward human rights and the creation of a truly civic society will ever really change. Moscow, 22 November 2001 (RFE/RL) -- About 5,000 representatives of citizens' groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) gathered yesterday at the Kremlin State Palace to begin a two-day Civic Forum. The Forum, organized by the Kremlin and other branches of the Russian government, is intended to create favorable conditions for the development of an independent and stable civic society in Russia. A civic society is one in which NGOs and numerous other institutions form a buffer between the people and a government, one which limits the power of the government and empowers ordinary citizens. In a speech opening the forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin told delegates his government is ready to work with the public to improve civic life in the country. Putin said that in order to have both a stable state and a prosperous society, it is necessary for the state and society to start a dialogue: "It is impossible to have a strong state, a flourishing and prosperous society, if there isn't good relations of partnership between the state and civic society. [To achieve it,] it is necessary to start a dialogue on equal terms. We understand that the effectiveness of such a dialogue to a large extent depends on us, on the representatives of the authorities and on the authorities as a whole. As far as this is concerned, we are ready to carry out the essential organizational measures and, if needed, legislative measures." Putin acknowledged that civic society in Russia is still not "fully mature." He said the goal of the authorities is to create favorable conditions for the development of a civic society: "The state has only one task here. It must create the most favorable environment to develop a civic society. It is the main task, and essentially the only one [that the state has]." Putin promised that the state will not try to take control of civic society and underlined that, in the end, a civic society cannot be created by instruction of the authorities: "Everyone understands that a civic society cannot be formed at the initiative of government officials. I think it is absolutely unproductive, practically impossible and even dangerous to try to create a civic society from the top down." Ella Panfilova, the leader of the Movement for Civilian Dignity and a deputy in the State Duma, or lower house, is one of the organizers of the Civic Forum. She tells RFE/RL that it is important for Putin to work with the numerous NGOs spread across Russia. She says Putin has instituted a variety of reforms in Russia, including an effort to introduce a more Western European approach in the judiciary, as well as dramatic tax reforms. Putin, Panfilova adds, needs the support of Russian citizens to keep the reforms moving forward: "[Putin] understands that to accomplish the big reforms [he has begun], he cannot count only on bureaucrats and government officials. [The Russian president] and [the] authorities carry the reforms in people's interests, and people have to be involved in the reform process." Aleksandr Vyeshnyakov is the chairman of Russia's Central Election Commission. He tells RFE/RL that sometimes "those in power" do not understand the needs of society and that, as a result, the authorities are often seen as being "at the opposition." Now, he points out, the situation has changed, and the Civic Forum is an expression of the Russian government's will to start a dialogue with Russian society: "In my point of view, [this forum] is an attempt to start a normal and constructive dialogue between those in power and the society. In my point of view, [Russian] society has to support this [initiative]. And as a representative of those in power, I can say that I'm [ready] to start such a dialogue with pleasure." According to Lyudmila Alekseyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, there are about 70,000 public organizations in Russia with a total membership of about 1 million people. These organizations provide services to about 20 million people. Many of these organizations, however, are refusing to take part in the Civic Forum. Some of them believe Russian authorities are unlikely ever to truly change their attitudes toward human rights. Others criticize the Forum as simply a public relations exercise organized by the Kremlin to prove to the West that Russia is not only participating in the fight against terrorism, but that it is going ahead with democratic reforms. Critics of the Civic Forum quote Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin's media adviser and director of the Effective Policy Foundation, as saying recently that the millions of people involved with Russian NGOs represent about 10 percent of voters and that, for this reason, the authorities cannot afford to overlook them. Yevgeny Klyod of St. Petersburg heads Nadezhda (Hope), an organization that helps orphans. He said he decided to take part in the Civic Forum in the hope that things will change in Russia. In particular, Klyod says he hopes the government's attitude toward organizations such as his will change. He says people who are ready to help Nadezhda often change their minds when they discover how much red tape they must endure: "I think things will change. [The authorities] have to change the existing mechanism used to solve the present problems. We have good laws, but the application of it is imperfect [since] bureaucracy slows everything down." Roman Chyorny is the representative of the Civic Commission for Human Rights of St. Petersburg, an organization that helps the mentally challenged. Chyorny -- alluding to opening speeches made by government officials -- says the Forum was well-organized by the Kremlin's image-makers. He says the authorities who spoke said exactly what the people wanted to hear: "It is evident that [those who spoke today] used the results of some polls. I'll use the term 'push-button.' I mean, they were able to push the right buttons. They knew what could make people react, and they spoke about it. They spoke about problems, but they were not able to suggest any solutions to it. [Authorities] didn't even indicate that it could be possible to find a solution to [our] problems and how to do it." Mikhail Smorchevsky is the president of a Moscow association that helps the children of servicemen who died while on duty. He said he is disappointed with the Forum. He says the authorities are using it as an arena to express their points of view and that there isn't any chance for real dialogue with civic organizations: "A forum is when representatives of society and [the] authorities speak together. But here they just spoke for formality's sake and left. They left the Forum to [speak] to itself. We gathered here to speak with the president, [to] ask him questions." In order to avoid being used by the Kremlin, the NGOs adopted a set of rules, including guidelines for transparent financing and agreement about the non-election of any presidium or governing bodies. Participants also agreed not to issue any declarations. In special sessions yesterday, Forum participants discussed some of Russia's most pressing problems, including measures to combat corruption, social protection of military service people, the reform of Russia's military, educational system and youth and migration policies, the rights of refugees and migrants, and how to achieve peace in Chechnya. ******* #7 Christian Science Monitor November 23, 2001 Dust off those reports on nuclear threats By Daniel Schorr WASHINGTON - In my somewhat chaotic filing system, I have a collection of documents labeled WMD for "weapons of mass destruction." They are mostly reports by official and scholarly panels on the looming threats of chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare. It is remarkable how little attention these reports have received until lately. To pick a few off the pile, there is the 1998 report of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project against Catastrophic Terrorism led by former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Assistant Secretary Ashton Carter. It calls for mobilization in anticipation of an emergency resulting from an act of terrorism. There is a booklet compiled by the McCormick Tribune Foundation last year titled "Catastrophic Terrorism: Uncertain Response." Then, a 1998 report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warning that some college students have designed workable models of atomic bombs. On the more official side, the January report of an Energy Department task force chaired by former Sen. Howard Baker and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler, stressing the need to control "loose nukes," especially in Russia. A 1998 report of the US Commission on National Security, headed by former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, calls for more attention to terrorist dangers. All these and more are being dusted off now that Osama bin Laden has claimed to have nuclear weapons, and especially now that he may be feeling increasingly besieged. There is new attention to the testimony of an Al Qaeda member last winter in federal court in New York about meetings aimed at acquiring nuclear fuel on the black market, probably from a former Soviet state. Now, in The Economist magazine, Harvard's Graham Allison, former assistant secretary of Defense, reports on terrorist groups trying to break into Russian nuclear storage sites and the possibility that up to 40 KGB suitcase nuclear bombs are not accounted for. Last year, says Mr. Allison, the CIA intercepted a message in which a member of the Al Qaeda group boasted of plans for an American Hiroshima. Now, perhaps, the Bush administration will consider restoring some of the funds cut from the Nunn-Lugar Program, which in 10 years has paid for defusing 5,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. Maybe we needed Osama bin Laden to prod the United States government to take the nuclear threat seriously. Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst for NPR. ******* #8 Putin OK's plan to cancel conscription MOSCOW, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin marked the beginning of a new stage in Russia's military overhaul he endorsed Wednesday the government's plan to gradually abolish conscription and create a professional army. Putin's spokesman Alexei Gromov said the decision was taken during the president's meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov in the Kremlin. Gromov failed to specify the time frame of the proposed measure, but Interfax news agency on Wednesday quoted sources in the Russian government as saying the gradual switch to professional army would take "at least 10 years." According to the government plan, the sources added, a number of army units will undergo an experiment in the foreseeable future that will help determine the chief parameters of the effectiveness of the switch. Under the experiment, these units will be fully staffed by the servicemen hired on contracts. Each year, the number of such units will be increasing, at the same time reducing the number of conscripted servicemen. Today, around 100,000 soldiers serve on a contract basis and the figures keep rising steadily. The endorsed plan is part of the reform proposed last November by Russia's influential Security Council. The reform also provides for substantial troop cutbacks that aim to reduce the number of servicemen from the current 1.2 million to 850,000 by 2005. Additionally, the reform will also include purchases of new weaponry, a bigger role for Russia's conventional forces, better training and application of more modern military technologies. Currently, young Russian men aged 18 to 27 are obliged to complete a compulsory, two-year service in the army. The draft is largely dodged as many conscripts fear abuse by older servicemen, bad living conditions and scarce food. Moreover, most of them are frightened of being drafted, trained and then sent to fight in breakaway Chechnya. The Chief of the Russian army's General Staff, Col. Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, said Wednesday, "Russia is not completely rejecting the conscription." However, said the general, "Contract servicemen should serve in the 'hot spots'," referring to the flashpoints of armed conflicts such as Chechnya or other areas of the former Soviet Union where separatist wars were fought during the 1990s. In order to execute the change, Kvashnin added, Russia would need to have a "sufficient social base, (ability to pay) sufficient salaries that would make the contractual service attractive." Kvashnin spoke in Brussels where he was participating in the work of the Russia-NATO joint standing military committee. A major advocate of the army turning professional, Russia's liberal Union of Rightist Forces, or SPS, welcomed the news from the Kremlin. Party Chairman Boris Nemtsov called Putin's decision "extremely important" and added that the switch to professional army "is a fundamental part of the SPS' program of a military reform." Besides this, SPS also pushes for a reduction of the military service to six months. According to the plan, a soldier completing six months of compulsory training would have a choice to quit and be listed in the army reserve or opt to sign a contract and continue serving for a salary. This week, Moscow's independent Ekho Moskvy radio conducted a poll asking listeners whether they approved of the concept of the military reform proposed by SPS. Among the 2,480 respondents who called during a 5-minute phone in session, 84 percent supported the plan, while the remaining 16 percent were against it. ****** #9 BBC Monitoring Russia's Putin reportedly approves plan to abolish military draft by 2010 Source: Kommersant, Moscow, in Russian 22 Nov 01 Compulsory conscription is doomed and will eventually be replaced by recruitment of professional soldiers, Russian newspaper Kommersant has said. However, draft will not be abolished quickly, as this would entail manning difficulties in the armed forces. The text of the article, published on 22 November, follows. Subheadings have been inserted editorially. In 2010 the military service draft will be abolished in Russia and the armed forces will be transferred to the contract principle of manning. Those are the aims stated in the plan for professionalization of the army approved by Vladimir Putin yesterday [21 November] after his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. The document submitted by Mikhail Kasyanov has the long and complicated title "Material on the Implementation of Measures Connected With the Transition to the Manning of Some Military Posts by Servicemen Carrying Out Military Service on a Contract Basis." In fact, as Kommersant was told at both the Defence Ministry and the Kremlin, this is nothing less than a declaration of intent to make the Russian army a contract army and entirely abandon the military draft. In 1996, a month before the presidential election, Boris Yeltsin signed Decree No. 723 whereby the draft was to have been abolished from spring 2000. But in 1998 the edict was amended and the phrase "from spring 2000" was replaced with "gradually, as the necessary conditions are created". That is to say - as people interpreted this amendment - never. Nobody was expecting Vladimir Putin to return to this subject at all. Less than two years ago the then acting president, speaking live on Baltika Radio, stated that although he does not intend to put the whole country under arms and will increase the proportion of professional military men "since the technology is getting more complex and only really well-trained people can handle it", he does not consider it necessary for Russia to have a "wholly and entirely" professional army. Vladimir Putin personally did not comment yesterday on the document he had approved. Chief of General Staff Anatoliy Kvashnin and Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov did speak. The former said that conscripts should not serve in "hot spots" and that permanent-readiness units should be switched to a contract footing first of all, while the latter explained that the Defence Ministry will submit a plan for the transition to a contract system in 2004 but did not specify the time scale for a complete transition to a contract system. In fact it is all much more concrete than that. On the basis of Security Council decisions adopted in November last year (the military reform blueprint drawn up under the leadership of Sergey Ivanov, who was Security Council secretary at the time) the Defence Ministry has formulated its vision of the process of transition to a contract army. As Kommersant's source in the Defence Ministry reported, the document was based on the government projection of socioeconomic development and was coordinated with the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Finance, and the Security Council apparatus. It assumed the form of the "Materials on the Implementation of Measures..." and was submitted to the president by the prime minister. The final goal is the transition in 2008-2010 to the manning of the armed forces on a contract basis and the abandonment of the draft. The mechanism for replacing conscripts in specific units, formations, service arms, and combat arms will be specified in detail in a special federal targeted programme, which the Defence Ministry is to draw up by the end of 2003. It is to be approved in 2004. What status the programme will have - governmental or presidential - has not yet been decided but the Defence Ministry source told Kommersant's correspondent that the military would like it to have presidential status. The programme will contain a plan for the formulation of the necessary normative documents, including the legislative documents, and expenditure on the implementation of the reform, which will be a separate budget item; Minister Ivanov yesterday estimated this expenditure at "hundreds of billions of roubles". Transition to professional army costly Obviously the military intend to make the maximum demands on the government in the course of drafting the targeted programme. Expenditure on maintaining a draftee and a contractor in 2000 totalled R16,000 and R41,000 respectively. According to the military's estimates last year, the automatic replacement of all draftees by contract personnel would require R18.5bn. But the Defence Ministry is sure that forming an army entirely of professionals will make it necessary, first, to increase the contract personnel's pay several times over (at the moment a section commander who concludes a contract on the usual terms gets R1,700) and, second, to create the appropriate infrastructure for them, since contract personnel will not exist in the same conditions as conscripts. It is also necessary to make provision for an increase in appropriations for mobilization training for reservists: Military [training] assemblies, far from being abolished, will, on the contrary, be extended substantially: A small professional army must have the opportunity to increase its strength from among reservists. Kommersant's source in the General Staff estimated the total expenditure on implementing the programme at approximately R100bn in 2006-2010 but stressed that these are purely preliminary calculations. Draft ultimately doomed, but here to stay for the time being But the General Staff source told Kommersant that the draft (currently 180,000-190,000 men) will not be reduced in the immediate future. According to him, conscript positions are not fully manned at present and even the army cuts that have begun will only enable the military to fill vacancies in the course of the next few draft campaigns. But the present system has no future, all the same: After 2010 a "demographic collapse" is expected and the military will not be able to man the army with conscripts however much they may want to. However, it is premature for future draftees to rejoice. The Defence Ministry has thus far had mainly negative experience of staffing with contract personnel. In the initial stages of the second Chechen campaign when even privates were getting R800-R900 a day the manning level of the joint grouping of federal forces by volunteers reached 40 per cent but as soon as funding was reduced the number of those wanting to fight also fell. And of the 150,000 contract personnel currently serving in the army half are women - officers' wives and daughters for whom there is simply no other work in the military camps. So it is quite probable that the incumbent president will also come to the conclusion that it is necessary to make the transition to a professional army not by some definite future date but "gradually, as the necessary conditions are created". ******* #10 Moskovsky Komsomolets November 22, 2001 IN CAMOUFLAGE Putin loves the army, but his love brings few benefits Author: Viktor Sokirko [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] DURING HIS ELECTION CAMPAIGN, VLADIMIR PUTIN RELIED MOSTLY ON THE ARMY, AND SHOWERED IT WITH ALL SORTS OF GESTURES AND PROMISES. UNFORTUNATELY, PROMISES ARE ALL THEY TURNED OUT TO BE. PROMISES TO BE MADE AND PROMPTLY FORGOTTEN, SINCE MILITARY PERSONNEL HAVEN'T SEEN MANY REAL BENEFITS WITH PUTIN IN POWER. Vladimir Putin's promises to the army haven't been kept WHEN HIS ELECTION CAMPAIGN WAS UNFOLDING, VLADIMIR PUTIN RELIED MOSTLY ON THE ARMY, AND SHOWERED IT WITH ALL SORTS OF GESTURES. HE FLEW COMBAT PLANES, WENT OUT TO THE SEA IN SUBMARINES, AND PROMISED HIGHER SALARIES. ALL THIS WAS ACCOMPANIED BY ALL THE CORRECT WORDS ABOUT SECURITY, NECESSITY TO BOOST THE NATION'S DEFENCE CAPACITY, AND A BETTER LOT FOR SERVICEMEN, WHO SURELY DESERVE IT. UNFORTUNATELY, PROMISES ARE ALL THEY TURNED OUT TO BE. PROMISES TO BE MADE AND PROMPTLY FORGOTTEN. The best disciplined part of society by definition, the military performs its duties but dissatisfied muttering get louder and louder. The army will not march the streets with hand-painted slogans of course, but no one is going to keep officers in the Army and Navy. Even the much publicized reorganizations and reductions are not needed. What with the ongoing staff drain, the Armed Forces will cease to exist entirely on their own. Statistical data already shows that officers resigning the services far outnumber graduates from military educational establishments who come to the Armed Forces every year. The army has a lot of grudges to nurture and feel slighted. Most of them are grudges against the president aka supreme commander-in- chief. The most banal of them concern the so-called social protection of servicemen - salaries, flats, prestige of military service. At first, when Putin was making promises, even the worst skeptics still remembering Boris Yeltsin and his wild promises trusted him. When the president himself is talking the necessity of restoring prestige of the Armed Forces, something surely should change in the complicated relations between the army and the state. Thousands of resignations were cancelled then. Disappointment was quick to follow... No higher salaries for the military. Promises were made to raise salaries by 20% as of September 1. Salaries were not raised. These days, servicemen are promised higher salaries again in return for no more benefits - on the president's(!) initiative. Privileges will become history on January 1, salaries will be raised on July 1. If ever. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov complains that the falling oil prices are going to affect the revenues part of the budget. It means that someone will be left without money. Who do you think? make three guesses and the first two do not count. The army has already guessed. The situation with flats is not any better. Nothing has been added to the meager tenement construction budget of the Defense Ministry. Russian generals have long been disappointed with Putin. Of course, they do not complain of empty wallets and no flats to live in. Generals have much more serious grudges. Appointing an officer from secret services to the pinnacle of uniformed power in Russia, the president made his distrust of the military plain. With all respect to Sergei Ivanov, he knows the army and problems of the service only on the level of a secretary of the Security Council instructed to draw up the plan of reorganization of the Armed Forces. It is probably difficult for Ivanov to command the army h does not know, but it does not seem to matter to the president. What matters is that he put his own man to the post of the defense minister. The president met with generals on the eve of his trip to the United States. He delivered a speech, quite smart and correct. The president specified the priorities in the light of new threats and challenges to national security - improvement of the command and control structure, structural optimization of the Armed Forces, concentration of resources on priorities, higher combat and operational readiness of the troops, social problems of servicemen. Everything, in other words, the national leaders have been trying to accomplish these last ten years. Generals only shrugged - why bother with repeating all this? Even the visit itself of the president to his American opposite number generated a new wave of disconsolate muttering in the Defense Ministry. The military has not come to yet from withdrawal from the bases in Cuba and Vietnam. Not very important assets from the military point of view, they nevertheless were elements of prestige and something enabling Moscow to wield at least some influence in the respective regions of the world. "Withdrawing from the bases, we should have got at least something in return," sources at the General Staff say. The generals are stunned now that Putin intends to reduce nuclear arsenals without a treaty, only on the basis of his partner's promise to follow suit. "At least Yeltsin promised to insert new coordinates into missile computers. This is different now. If the Americans build their anti-ballistic missile defense system, we will remain without missiles altogether," sources from the Defense Ministry sigh. In short, the supreme commander-in-chief fell out of love with the army without bothering to fall in love with it in the first place. What can he expect from the army now? ****** #11 Asia Times November 22, 2001 Post-Soviet groupings eye Central Asian security By Sergei Blagov MOSCOW - Moscow has long pledged that Russia prioritizes cooperation within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and other post-Soviet groupings, but without seeking domination within the group. However, a recent flurry of diplomatic activities in the Russian capital may suggest otherwise. Notably, on Wednesday in Moscow the Kremlin held a meeting of defense ministers of the CIS and the Collective Security Treaty, also known under its Russian acronym DKB. CIS air defense integration has been the most advanced area of cooperation so far, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said. The defense ministers also discussed legal cooperation so as to combat terrorism. Increased military cooperation between CIS countries, notably in the area of air defense, is "extremely important", Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at the meeting with CIS defense ministers at the Kremlin. However, the Russian leader indicated that Moscow was not going to push its former Soviet brethren to form a military alliance. "Every CIS member-state determines its level of involvement in multilateral military coordination," Putin was quoted as saying by Russia's official RIA news agency. Military policy coordination within the CIS "has played a serious and stabilizing role", Putin said. An outcome of the ongoing war on terrorism very much depends on military factors, Putin was quoted by RIA as saying. All CIS member states, except Turkmenistan, attended the gathering. Turkmenistan's authoritarian leader President Saparmurad Niyazov has long pledged a policy of neutrality and has been reluctant to involve his sparsely populated country in military and political struggles around neighboring Afghanistan. Moreover, on the eve of defense ministers' gathering, on November19 Moscow held DKB consultations in order to create a new unit in charge of regional security. Valery Nikolayenko, DKB secretary-general, has stated that security measures by the DKB helped to forestall the Taliban infiltration into Central Asia, notably Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Yet apart from military issues, a meeting of the so-called Eurasian Economic Commonwealth, or EEC, was also convened in Moscow earlier this week. The creation of the EEC came as an important move toward further post-Soviet integration, Viktor Khristenko, Russia's deputy prime minister and the country's chief official in charge of the EEC, told the gathering. During a summit meeting of the CIS, held in the Belarus capital Minsk on May 31-June 1, one of the groups within the CIS (including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) decided to turn their customs union into an EEC, aiming at freeing mutual trade. EEC presidents are due to meet at a first EEC summit in May 2002. The EEC is an open institution and other CIS states can join, the EEC secretary-general Grigory Rapota told the journalists in Moscow. Incidentally, in his previous capacity, Rapota served as Russia's top official in charge of arms exports. No big wonder that the EEC meeting in Moscow discussed customs, border guard and tax control measures "with a backdrop of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan". Due to its economic might, Russia has more say in the Eurasian Commonwealth. Russia has a 40 percent vote in the EEC, Belarus and Kazakhstan - 20 percent each, while both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were given 10 percent each. Former Soviet republics have long vowed to boost their economic cooperation. But the path from plans on paper to reality seems fraught with potholes and the proposed economic integration is a long way off. In 2000, the total trade turnover between all CIS states reached US$61 billion or up 32 percent compared to 1999. On the other hand, the total CIS investments in the Russian economy have reached a tiny 0.1 percent of all foreign investments in Russia so far. It is understood that there are few economic dividends for Russia in closer ties with its mainly impoverished CIS partners, which owe Russia billions of dollars for oil and gas supplies. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a long-time advocate of "Eurasian" integration, now serves as the ECC's chairman. However, in a grim reminder of regional volatility a talk of alleged assassination plots surfaced in the Kazakh capital. Notably, on Monday, Kazakh Prime Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev claimed that at least two plots to assassinate President Nazarbayev had been uncovered within the past three months. Tokayev used the allegations as a pretext to reshuffle his government. The CIS - whose creation in 1991 sealed the fate of the collapsing Soviet Union - loosely groups 12 ex-Soviet republics, while the Eurasian Economic Commonwealth represents a core of countries that say they want closer integration. Separately, Russia and Belarus have also signed a treaty pledging even closer ties in the form of a union state, including the two former Soviet republics. Moreover, Belarus could join a possible United Nations peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, the country's foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Savinykh indicated at the weekend. On the other hand, Moscow remains reluctant to become directly involved in Afghanistan. On Monday, Putin indicated Russia's readiness to help rescue US pilots in Afghanistan or Tajikistan, if necessary, simultaneously pointing out that Russian combat troops won't be sent to Afghanistan. Yet despite official denials, Russia's State Duma, the Lower House of parliament, has initiated an official investigation into media speculation over the alleged hiring of Russia Afghan war veterans to serve in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has been keen to capitalize on its good relations with Afghan anti-Taliban movements, especially the Northern Alliance. "We had been supporting the Northern Alliance financially and militarily and it worked," Ivanov argued, referring to recent Taliban reverses. On Monday, Russian special envoy in Kabul Alexander Oblov told Northern Alliance officials that Russia opposed any Taliban role in the future government "in any form". Afghan officials reportedly assured the Russian envoy that Afghanistan was moving toward a broad-based coalition government. Consequently, the Kremlin closely follows Central Asian developments. On Monday, Putin had yet another round "regular telephone discussion" with his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rakhmonov relative to anti-terrorist operation and settlement efforts in Afghanistan. Moreover, Russian and Chinese deputy foreign ministers are due to meet in Beijing later this month to discuss cooperation in the combat against terrorism, a first such bilateral meeting so far, Russian news wires reported. This working group was created in line with agreements reached last October between Putin and China's President Jiang Zemin in Shanghai. In recent years there have been a number of post-Soviet integration initiatives in both economic and security areas, yet these efforts have hardly brought any meaningful results so far - at least in Central Asia. Hence, it remains to be seen whether these new post-Soviet groupings will prove viable vehicles for Moscow's policies in the region. ****** #12 Ekspert No. 43 November 2001 SMILES DO NOT SOLVE PROBLEMS Washington still has to show it can take Russia's interests into account Author: Yevgeny Verlin [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] MOSCOW HAS SECURED AMERICA'S PROMISE TO REPEAL THE JACKSON-VANIK AMENDMENT, TO HELP RUSSIA JOIN THE WTO, AND TO FINALLY RECOGNIZE RUSSIA AS A COUNTRY WITH A FREE MARKET ECONOMY. WILL THIS SUFFICE TO PLACATE THE INFLUENTIAL PART OF THE RUSSIAN ESTABLISHMENT WHICH STILL DISTRUSTS THE UNITED STATES? The Russian-American summit: successes and failures It so happened that on the eve of and during the summit, Russia and the United States demonstrated their vulnerability again when a plane crashed in New York only hours before Vladimir Putin's presidential plane took off for New York. The plane may have been hijacked. It is against this background that the long-awaited event (as Putin phrased it) took place in Afghanistan, where the Northern Alliance took Kabul in time for the Russian president's arrival in the United States. Putin phrased his comments in a way that clearly implied: "We are watching the situation too." The trial of Salman Raduyev began in Makhachkala, Dagestan, the following day. Another not-quite-coincidence. Once again, it was a veiled message to the West: our number one terrorist (or number two, it doesn't really matter) is facing trial already while you don't even know you number one public enemy's whereabouts. The Americans responded to this demonstration of Moscow's capacities and successes in the war on the common enemy the following day. The American special forces pulled off a successful operation and liberated eight officials of international humanitarian groups from the Taliban. (Or were they ransomed? We do not know.) Opinion polls show that over 70% Americans are prepared to grit their teeth and accept losses in a ground operation in Afghanistan but official Washington knows the ratio may change in a hurry and that it should restrict itself to "precise" operations in its search for bin Laden and Co. Which means in its turn that what is needed is assistance of rank Asian warriors who do not require advanced American weapons, comfort in the field, and all other material-technical attributes of the post-industrial world. In the near future at least the Americans are doomed to repeat military operations against terrorism in countries like Afghanistan. It follows that they desperately need an ally more or less close to them but still residing in the industrial era. Someone who can be a go-between in contacts with the common enemy's antagonists and who can provide them with cheap weapons (Russian-made weapons are what is meant). Not to mention informational exchange, air corridors, and lease of fragments of its geopolitical yard. Life shows in other words that America cannot hope to triumph over the common enemy without Russia and its friends/satellites. On the whole, Russia's alliance with the United States and the West in general is necessitated by some other objective factors as well. It is clear now that the spread of nuclear and other mass destruction weapons (with the option of it ending up in the hands of terrorists some day) cannot be checked without Russia. It is also clear - and Putin emphasized it more than once while on the visit - that the West is attracted to Russia and CIS countries as an alternative and reliable source of fuel. Indeed, who can rely on absolute stability of the Arab peninsula nowadays? The United States needs friends wherever they can be found. The allies Washington considered reliable only yesterday (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for example) are viewed in the United States almost as potential kegs of black powder now. These countries are focal points of the forces that do not share the West's basic values and have their own views on what the brave new world should be like. Incurably democratic America (and democratic is what it is, despite court martial and broader powers delegated to secret services) is facing serious problems in maintenance of its security and interests. It even has difficulties with its NATO partners. Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder intended to send 4,000 servicemen to man the rear of the American troops in Afghanistan but environmentalists in the ruling coalition objected. They objected so vigorously in fact that before passing the decision to send the men to Afghanistan, the parliament was forced to vote confidence in the government. Putin told students of the Crawford public school, "It is important that we clear away the ideological barricades made in the past, and President Bush has been very helpful with that." These words indicate an eagerness to do away with Cold War legacy and to try and move America to where it can see the new realities. Leaders of the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy were quoted as saying before the summit that military-political and civilizational aspects are coming to the foreground in globalization again, pushing all other factors (technological, economic, informational) into the background. Even if all this lasted five or ten years (while the counter- terrorism campaign goes on), the global North should go on seeking and finding reliable and long-term resources of mutual support and mutual trust. It means Russia (not China surely which is nothing if not a potential rival of the United States). Russia has not been America's enemy for a decade already, or at least that is what the world had been told again and again. All the same, the real breakthrough began only months ago. This is what The New York Time remarked on "the chances missed". Describing Putin's short meeting with ex-president Bush and ex-state secretary Baker in Austin, Texas, the newspaper quote critics of Bush and Baker as saying that "Relations between the United States and Russia are prospering the way they should have prospered a decade ago." In other words, August 1991 did not endear the American political establishment toward Russia the way September 2001 did. Common threats provide a better impulse for rapprochement than common values. Russian president put it with diplomatic finesse. "Our peoples have different histories," Putin said. "If we take look at more than two centuries of our relations, however, we will immediately see that Russia and America have always stood side by side at sharp turns of history when existence itself of our states was jeopardized." On the other hand, all this talk about new friendship has not yet been transformed into adequate practice. Russia and America did not sign a treaty or accord on missile defense and strategic arms reduction. Bush failed to persuade Putin to dismantle altogether or radically amend the ABM treaty of 1972. Putin failed to persuade Bush of the necessity to sign a formal treaty on the planned reduction of nuclear arsenals. Friends do not need formalities, Bush said adding that "a look in Vladimir Putin's eyes and a handshake" were all he needed to convince him of that. "Friends do not target their nuclear missiles at their friends," commented Robert Norris, an analyst with the American council for natural resources protection. "Friendship or not, we still have long- range missiles targeted on Russia," Norris said. According to other experts, Bush's decision to reduce American nuclear arsenals to 1,700 - 2,200 warheads is based on the Pentagon's assurances that this quantity will suffice to destroy Russia. There is another nuance: the United States doesn't need so many missiles, but Russia's situation is different. Russia can no longer afford to maintain its nuclear arsenals, and has to cut them whether it wants to or not. It isn't hard to see who retains freedom to maneuver in this case. American experts criticizing Bush for his disinclination to get down to formalities are surprisingly supported by the leading American media. The New York Post and The Washington Post urge the US president to make a full-fledged treaty with the Russians, a treaty detalizing all plans with regard to strategic offensive and defensive arms and with regard to Moscow's and Washington's future moves in the sphere of nuclear arms nonproliferation. There are many Americans who advocate the principle of better safe than sorry, and who do not want security issues to be dependent on personal friendships between Bill and Boris, or George and Vladimir. Moscow secured America's promise to complete the procedure of repealing the discriminatory Jackson-Vanik amendment (which affects trade between our states), to help Russia join the World Trade Organization, and to finally recognize Russia as a country with a free market economy. The Americans met Moscow halfway even in the matter of Russia's debt to the United States, which the Kremlin would really like to see written off. They did so in connection with their security considerations. Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and his colleague Richard Lugar advocate the following. Russia begins with drawing a transparent program of destruction, reliable control, and nonproliferation of mass destruction weapons from its arsenals the United States deem "vulnerable to thefts or unwarranted sales". Russia's debt to the United States will be chalked off along with implementation by Russia of certain jobs in this sphere subject to American monitoring. The plan doesn't nullify the accord dating back to Clinton and Yeltsin in accordance with which Washington has allocated almost a billion dollars a year for the same purpose. Senator Jesse Helms suggested that Washington should also demand from the Kremlin a pledge to suspend deliveries of modern arms and military technologies to Iran. Biden replied that the Russians are doing all this in order to earn hard currency to service their debts. In short, some progress has been made - or at least became possible - in Russia's movement to the global markets and in global stability. As for long-range positioning of the Russian Federation and the United States in the world, the matter has not become any clearer. Take NATO for example. Does Washington want Russia in NATO, and how should the Alliance change to make it possible? All involved parties are still racking their brains about these and related questions. For the time being, Putin merely reiterates his position: "Recognizing the part NATO has been playing in the world, Russia is prepared to broaden its cooperation with the organization. If we change the quality of Russia-NATO relations, the issues of NATO expansion will cease to matter." As for missile defense, Putin in his American TV interview on the eve of the summit expressed confidence that "a scenario will be found which takes the interests of both our countries into account." The search for this scenario is further complicated by the fact that Moscow has a working agreement with Beijing to protect the ABM treaty of 1972 and coordinate all actions in this regard. The presidents of Russia and the United States adopted a Joint Action Plan which is supposed to make interests of our countries compatible. This working document calls for broader cooperation in the war on global challenges to security and cooperation in the political, military-political, and economic spheres. Some observers view this "Putin-Bush Pact" and results of the summit in general as a proof of future harmonization of national interests of the two states. Caspian Sea oil is something that is of mutual interest, for example. Moscow and Washington already hint, however, that they have removed the region from the sphere of geopolitical rivalry. As for "concessions", Putin will probably have to answer his critics on return to Moscow. Gennadi Zyuganov and others are already saying that now that military bases in Cuba and Vietnam have been abandoned, the Kremlin "may opt to turn over the Kuril Islands to Japan, agree to having NATO bases in Central Asia, the Baltic states, and Ukraine, and accept aggression against Belarus." There are fears as well that the Americans may settle in Turkmenistan, build a pipeline via Afghanistan and Pakistan (the old Saudi-American project), and eventually deprive Russia of the possibility of buying cheap gas from Turkmenistan. Elaborating on his attitude toward the American presence in Central Asia, Putin said he did not want Afghanistan to remain a breeding place for international terrorists some of whom end up in Chechnya. Will this suffice to placate the influential part of the Russian establishment which still distrusts the United States? Time will tell. In any case, the Americans still have to walk their part of the way, to show that not only the world as such has been changed by September 11, but that their approach and attitude toward the rest of the world have changed as well. *******