#7 - RW 11-12-04 - RW Home
Moscow Times
November 12, 2004
A Soviet Friend Cast Aside by Russia
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat found a strong ally in a Soviet leadership intent on undermining the West and pleased with his profuse gratitude for its support, but the Soviet collapse and Russia's shifting priorities led to an unbridgeable gulf.

Many believe Arafat's meteoric rise to influence and fame in the 1960s and 1970s would not have been possible without Soviet support, but the extent of that assistance remains shrouded in mystery even after Arafat's death on Thursday.

"I'd better refrain from talking about that for now," former KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov said by telephone.

Leonid Shebarshin, former head of the KGB's foreign intelligence department, also declined comment.

The Soviet romance with Arafat began in the late 1960s when he became leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said Irina Zvyagelskaya, a Middle East researcher at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

"We were in the middle of the Cold War, and we were playing a zero-sum game against the West: whatever was bad for them was good for us," she said, referring to Arafat-orchestrated attacks on U.S.-backed Israel and its citizens.

The Communist leadership, however, did not take a big gamble on Arafat, preferring instead to put its efforts into leaders of countries such as Iraq, Egypt and Syria who promised to follow a socialist path, said Vitaly Naumkin, head of the Center for Strategic and Political Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies.

Arafat's PLO was regarded at the time as a moderate group in the Middle East, and Moscow picked it as a political partner, Naumkin said. "Of course, the PLO was supported by the Soviet Union through different channels, including the special services," he said. "But there is nothing unusual about that. Most liberation movements were supported by them."

Ion Pacepa, a former senior Romanian intelligence officer who defected to the United States, claimed in an article published in The Wall Street Journal last year that Arafat was a creature of the KGB. Citing what he called the KGB's personal file on Arafat, Pacepa wrote that the KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. He said Arafat was an important undercover operative for the KGB and his actions were orchestrated from Moscow.

Naumkin dismissed the claims, saying Arafat had always been an independent leader who -- despite Soviet support -- sometimes jeopardized Soviet foreign policies with his actions.

Relations between Arafat and the Soviet Union were sometimes strained by difference of opinion and interpretation of events. Still, Arafat was treated warmly by the Communist leadership, Zvyagelskaya said. "Always smiling, friendly and always offering hugs, Arafat behaved just like the Communist bosses of the time," she said. "He never forget to express his personal gratitude to Soviet leaders for their support."

Arafat showered gratitude on all Russians, not just Soviet leaders, said Air Force Major-General Yevgeny Kopyshev, who met Arafat in the 1970s.

"Unlike many other leaders of liberation movements who not only suckled from Russia but were ready to bite off its nipples, Arafat never tired of thanking Soviet rulers as well as any Russian man he happened to meet," he said.

The beginning of the end came when the Soviet Union broke up and the new Russian leadership made no effort to maintain the close friendship, Zvyagelskaya said, recalling a televised meeting in the early 1990s when President Boris Yeltsin dodged a hug from a clearly shocked Arafat. "Although he was very bright and quick at adjusting to new realities, Arafat failed to change his style in his relations with Russia," she said. "He put earlier allegiances above the immediate interests that began to dominate Russian politics."

Arafat and his cause lost importance as Russia's post-Cold War policies evolved to take into account the wave of Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel.

There was a brief renaissance when Yeltsin appointed Yevgeny Primakov, an Arab-speaking Soviet diplomat and former intelligence official, as foreign minister in 1996. A year later, Israeli media reported that Primakov announced during a meeting with Arafat in Ramallah that Russia would be the first country to recognize Palestinian statehood.

The last time Arafat visited Moscow was in 2000, when he asked President Vladimir Putin to mediate in talks with then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. President George W. Bush. Some Russian media called the Kremlin meeting "empty."

In 2002, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov canceled a scheduled meeting with Arafat in Ramallah during a trip to Israel, calling any visit "useless."

Putin sent his condolences Thursday to Arafat's family and the Palestinian leadership, praising Arafat as "an influential political figure on an international scale who dedicated his life to the Palestinian people's just cause, the fight for their inalienable right to create an independent state, which would coexist with Israel within recognized and secure borders." State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov are scheduled to attend Arafat's funeral in Cairo on Friday.