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Canoe News (Canada)
March 26, 2003
Relations between U.S.-Russia frosty
By FRED WEIR

MOSCOW (CP) - The temperature is plunging rapidly in U.S.-Russian ties, as the two sides exchange Cold War-style accusations and spar over the shape of the global order after America wins its war in Iraq.

"I can't remember seeing such sharp anti-American moods since the 1960s," says Alexander Panarin, who chairs the department of comparative politics at Moscow State University. Recent opinion polls suggest more than 90 per cent of Russians oppose U.S. military action in Iraq. "Elections are coming up in Russia, and every politician has to take the public's views into account," says Panarin.

The United States alleged this week that its forces fighting against Saddam Hussein's regime are at risk from sophisticated Russian-made weapons and electronic jamming equipment recently supplied by Russian companies to Baghdad, in breach of UN sanctions.

The Kremlin hotly denied the charges, and retorted that the United States has resumed the Cold War practice of sending high-flying U-2 spy planes to snoop on Russia from the airspace of Georgia, a former Soviet republic that's allied with the U.S. anti-Saddam coalition.

Russia's Defence Ministry says three U-2 flights in the past month have skirted Russia's borders, on one occasion causing fighter planes to be scrambled.

"There is an impression in Moscow that the U.S. is punishing us for our political stand against the war in Iraq," says Alexander Pikayev, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow.

"We haven't seen this kind of rhetoric since the Cold War."

Antagonisms have been building up for months as Russia joined France in threatening to veto any UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

In the week since the war began, Moscow's opposition has toughened. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned that Moscow will block any future Security Council move to grant post facto legitimacy to the U.S.-led coalition's assault or its postwar control in Baghdad.

"Iraq does not need democracy brought on the wings of the Tomahawk," Ivanov said, referring to the U.S. cruise missiles.

Some experts warn that tensions could spiral, especially if the U.S. cuts Moscow out of the anticipated postwar reconstruction of Iraq.

Russian oil companies have major business in the region, including a $20-billion US contract by the partly state-owned LukOil firm to develop Iraq's huge West Qurna oilfield, which could be nullified by a post-Saddam regime in Baghdad.

"If we are shut out of Iraq, Russia will be angry," says Yevgeny Bazhanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Institute of Contemporary International Studies. "The reasons are not so much economic, as that Russia cannot accept the U.S. acting as though it runs the world."

For many in Moscow, there is deep uncertainty about the further intentions of the U.S.

"If the Americans break Iraq's resistance swiftly, will they target Iran next?" says Panarin. "Russia has reasons to fear the threat coming into our own region."

Bazhanov raises the same worry: "If the Americans intend to move on to new targets after Iraq, it will be very dangerous," he says.

"Sooner or later, the U.S. must realize that it cannot solve all the world's problems on its own. It needs to co-operate with the UN, with Russia and others."

But the specific charges being traded could accelerate suspicions on both sides.

The U.S. claims that a Moscow-based company, Aviakonversiya, sold Iraq at least six of its portable jamming units, which are capable of scrambling the GPS signals used by many U.S. precision-guided munitions to locate their targets.

Aviakonversiya's director, Oleg Antonov, says the laptop-sized, three-kilogram devices were originally developed by Soviet scientists as an aid for astronomers.

Antonov says the American allegations that GPS jammers were delivered to Iraq are "nonsense." But he adds that Iraq "might have constructed such devices itself or purchased them from a third country."

A U.S. military spokesman on Tuesday declared that Iraqi efforts to baffle American guided weapons had failed miserably, and that all six Iraqi GPS jamming units had been destroyed in the early days of the war.

Two other Russian companies are suspected of providing militarily significant numbers of wire-guided Kornet anti-tank missiles, and thousands of night-vision goggles to Iraq in recent months. Some experts say the goggles could neutralize the American advantage in night-fighting.

Russian experts say all three companies named in the U.S. complaint do brisk export business, with customers that include the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Jordan, Yemen and India.

"These American allegations are plausible," says Vitaly Shlyikov, a former Russian deputy defence minister who is now an independent security consultant.

It's long been known that much of the former Soviet arsenal found its way into the international arms market during the wild 1990s, he notes, but the U.S. charges concern fresh production of advanced Russian weaponry.

"The fact is that the Kremlin is unable to control the situation, and the general climate of anti-Americanism prevailing among the Russian elite may encourage some businesspeople to take risks," such as dealing with Saddam, Shlyikov says.

"Russia would like to repair its relations with the U.S., but not at the cost of submitting to all American decisions," says Sergei Kazyonnov, an analyst with the independent Institute of National Security and Strategic Research in Moscow.

"The ball is in America's court now. If they want to be friends again, we're ready. If they want to go back to being enemies, we're ready for that too."

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