#6159
[Second Issue of the Day]
#11
ANALYSIS-Russia woos Southeast Asia with weapons,
technology
By Dan Eaton
BANGKOK, March 27 (Reuters) - Russia is seeking closer ties with Southeast Asia as its old spheres of influence crumble, wooing countries in the region with high-tech gadgetry ranging from nuclear reactors to missiles and fighter jets.
Regional economies are emerging from the crisis of the late 1990s and mothballed weapons procurement programmes are being dusted off at a time when Russia is losing ground in Central Asia as the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan grinds on.
"The economic boom may be over, but there is a slow recovery underway in the region and military programs that were suspended or scaled back are now starting to surface again. Of course Russia is interested," said Robert Karniol, Asia Pacific editor of Jane's Defence Weekly.
Late last month, Vladimir Artyakov, the director-general of Russia's state arms-exporter Rosoboroneksport, said while attending the Asian Aerospace 2002 exhibition in Singapore that the arms market in Southeast Asia was estimated to be worth $20 billion over the next decade.
He told Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency Moscow was looking to expand its lethal exports to the region.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is currently touring old communist ally Vietnam to promote a strategic partnership which will include cooperation in nuclear energy, as well as arms sales to Hanoi's mainly Soviet-equipped military.
NUCLEAR REACTOR
Russia's LOMO Corp is due to deliver 50 portable SA-18 surface-to-air missiles to Vietnam this year under a $64 million contract, according to Russia's Interfax news agency.
Military-run Myanmar recently took delivery of a dozen Russian MiG-29 fighter jets, and in January confirmed for the first time that it was negotiating to build its first nuclear reactor with Russian help.
The Malaysian air force is also mulling the purchase of a squadron of general-purpose fighter planes. Russia's Sukhoi Corporation, offering state-of-the-art Su-30MK fighters, is seen as a strong contender, say analysts.
Moscow is also pursuing Singapore, traditionally a client of U.S. and European arms makers, to buy Sukhoi jets to replace its ageing McDonnell Douglass A-4 Skyhawks.
During Southeast Asia's economic boom in the mid-1990s, Russia made several breakthroughs selling arms to the region, including the sale of MiG-29 fighters to Malaysia, surface-to-air missiles to Singapore and Mi-17 helicopters to Myanmar.
Moscow also tried unsuccessfully to break into the market in Thailand with advanced fighters and kilo class submarines.
Russia's interest in Southeast Asia is largely commercially driven, say analysts, but it is not without a strategic dimension as the country seeks to find new direction in the wake of its fall from superpower status and the end of the Cold War.
That search has taken on a new urgency post September 11.
TIGHT BUDGETS
The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has resulted in a Western military buildup in Central Asia which Russia has traditionally jealously guarded as its own backyard.
"There is another a strategic aspect to all of this...it has to do with domestic issues," said Karniol.
"The Russian armed forces have been going through a very tough time for the last decade and budgets have been very tight. Moscow has this vast defence industry staffed by highly skilled people that has to be sustained."
For the next 10 years, while Russia rebuilds its military, the country's desperate defence establishment will therefore have to focus on exports.
That plays into the hands of some Southeast Asian nations denied technology and weapons by Western countries concerned over political reform and human rights.
Many of the poorer countries in the region are also seeking to pay for military hardware through barter deals.
"Russia is much more flexible on price and terms," said one Bangkok-based diplomat on condition of anonymity. "With respect to human rights, they are also somewhat less concerned."
A good example is Moscow's sale of fighter jets to Myanmar, and its agreement to supply the impoverished military-ruled nation with a nuclear research reactor in return for timber and agricultural products.
As Russian ambassador to Myanmar Gleb Ivashentsov explained to Reuters in an interview last year:
"Do not demonise Myanmar. They should not be denied the right to develop their own Atomic energy. The general situation (in Myanmar) is very much misrepresented in the media. You do not see people in distress."
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