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#22 - RW 3-11-05 - RW Home
Moscow Times
March 9, 2005.
Big Bucks From Bushehr
By Yulia Latynina
Hard on the heels of the Bratislava summit, Russia signed a deal with Iran to
provide nuclear fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Russia has
helped build. The announcement aroused concern in Washington, at the
International Atomic Energy Agency and among Russian environmentalists. U.S.
Senator John McCain went so far as to call for Russia's exclusion from this
year's G8 summit.
The case against Russia helping Iran to develop its nuclear program is well
known. For starters, it's hard to believe that Iran, one of the world's largest
oil producers, needs nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Moreover, fuel for
the Bushehr plant will be shipped by rail to the Caspian Sea. Trains loaded with
nuclear fuel would make a tempting target for terrorists in southern Russia. And
the requirement that spent fuel be returned to Russia will hardly improve the
environmental situation here at home.
Even if you believe that Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons,
this doesn't alter the fact that the nuclear power plant is potentially the most
powerful suicide bomb in the world.
For all these reasons, most analysts were perplexed by the deal. It seems
reasonable to assume that by agreeing to provide nuclear fuel to Iran, Russia
has provided nuclear weapons to Muslim fanatics, laid the groundwork for the
seizure of nuclear material by terrorists in the Caucasus and turned its own
countryside into a nuclear waste dump.
The question is why -- especially after President Vladimir Putin bent over
backwards in Bratislava to ease U.S. concerns on the issue of nuclear safety,
possibly in exchange for Washington's backing of the regime in Moscow.
Maybe the experts are stumped by the deal because they're asking the wrong
questions. They're trying to understand it in geopolitical terms. But you could
ask instead who's making money off Bushehr. The power plant at Bushehr is being
built by the state-owned company Atomstroiexport. Until recently, the
controlling stake in Atomstroiexport belonged to the well-known industrialist
Kakha Bendukidze. After he was named Georgia's economy minister, however, the
oversight arm of the presidential administration audited the company and
discovered "a number of violations." The tax inspectors came next and slapped
the company with a bill for 1 billion rubles ($35 million) in back taxes.
In October 2004, Bendukidze sold his 53.8 percent stake in Atomstroiexport to
Gazprombank for 731 million rubles, or about $25 million -- not much for a
company that experts predict could receive up to $20 billion in orders in the
next few years. It may well be that if Bendukidze had refused to sell his stock,
he might have lost the company anyway, just as Mikhail Khodorkovsky was stripped
of Yuganskneftegaz.
There's a logic in all this. As long as Bendukidze controlled Atomstroiexport,
the Kremlin refused to back the plan to supply Muslim fundamentalists with
nuclear technology. As soon as the company was in the right hands, its profits
went through the roof. And if the nuclear fuel deal destabilized the global
geopolitical situation, so it goes. In other words, the deal was signed for
purely commercial reasons.
Following the tragedy in Beslan, Putin hinted that the Islamist terrorists
involved had backing from Western intelligence. Some people "want to tear off a
big chunk of our country" because they "think that Russia, as one of the
greatest nuclear powers in the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to
be eliminated," Putin said.
It will be interesting to see who gets blamed if terrorists seize a train
loaded with nuclear fuel. Probably the CIA again.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
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