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Edited by David Johnson
| ISSUE #31 | January 15, 1999 |
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 funding from the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based
Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education
organization.
Helsinki, January 11 (ITAR-TASS)--Russian
Chief of the General Staff
Anatoliy Kvashnin said the Army has suffered
"sweeping" cuts in the last 18
months and reached "super low defence
sufficiency" in Russia.
Speaking at a press conference in Helsinki,
where he is on an official
visit, Kvashnin said on Monday that this
has become possible owing to new
relations between Russia and other European
countries, as well as NATO.
He stressed that the Russian Armed Forces
have been reduced to
1,200,000 after 624,000 troops and 300,000
civilian employees have been
dismissed from service.
Kvashnin described the Russian Army
as "semi-professional," given the
fact that there are 400,000 officers and
200,000 warrant- officers.
Asked about Russian troops in regions
bordering on Finland, Kvashnin
noted that the number of troops in the
Leningrad military district has been
cut by 50 percent, the Baltic Fleet has
been cut by 30 percent and the
Northern Fleet by more than 25 percent.
While before the armies and divisions
deployed in this region could
fulfil both defensive and offensive tasks,
now they have been confronted
with purely defensive tasks.
Kvashnin has arrived in Finland at the
invitation of Gustav Hegglund,
commander of Finland's Defence Forces.
He has already met President Martti
Ahtisaari to discuss bilateral
relations, the international situation
and the participation of the armed
forces in peacekeeping missions.
On Tuesday, the Chief of Russian General
Staff is due to visit a tank
brigade and a communications regiment.
#2
Russian Defense, Satellite Systems
Unprepared for Y2K Bug
Moscow, 12 Jan (ITAR-TASS) -- The "Year
2000 problem" with computers
is a national security issue, Boris Ponomarenko,
the deputy chairman of the
State Communications [and Information]
Committee, said today during a
teleconference with heads of federal members'
executive authorities.
He warned that the country's satellite,
communications management,
transport, and defense systems were most
at risk from disruption when
computers adjust their clocks on 31 December
1999, PRIME-TASS reported.
[Aleksandr] Krupnov [committee chairman]
noted that computer
systems could fail before 31 December.
Experts have warned that disruption
could happen on 9 September this year,
when the figure 9999 could be
interpreted by some programs as an instruction
to shut down.
The committee has drawn up recommendations
on how to deal with the
Year 2000 problem and by 1 March this
year will advise the government on
ways of preparing for it. But at
regional level virtually nothing has yet
been done to deal with the issue, according
to the committee's information.
#3
Moscow Times
January 15, 1999
Sanctions Threat Irks Aerospace Industry
By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer
Russian officials voiced bewilderment
and frustration Thursday over U.S.
threats to bar Russian rockets from launching
American satellites to punish
Russia for alleged exports of missile
and nuclear know-how to Iran.
"All these threats are absolutely ungrounded,"
Yury Milov, deputy
director of the Russian Space Agency,
or RKA, said in a telephone interview
Thursday.
Not only would the loss of U.S. satellite launches seriously hurt
the cash-
starved Russian space industry, but the
United States would be shooting its
own satellite industry in the foot if
it cut the use of Russian rockets, Milov
said.
The U.S. government said Wednesday that it will either cut the number
of
launches or ban them altogether when it
sets the quota for Russian rockets for
the next year unless Moscow acts to stop
its missile and nuclear technology
from being leaked to Iran.
Russian diplomats reacted rapidly to the accusations. Foreign Ministry
spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin categorically
denied Russia was giving Iran
military assistance and called U.S. attempts
to link these accusations with
space cooperation "far-fetched."
The sanctions threat came as a shock to Russia's two biggest rocket
makers -
the Moscow-based Khrunichev Space Research
and Production Center and the
Samara-based Progress plant.
"I don't really understand what we have
to do with all these rumors" of
ballistic missile technologies and components
being smuggled across the
Russian-Iranian border, said Konstantin
Lantratov, spokesman for the state-
owned Khrunichev center.
Khrunichev manufactures Proton rockets,
which are set to put nine U.S.
satellites into orbit this year, including
the Telstar 6 craft that has
already been shipped to the Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan to be launched
Jan. 30.
Each launch is priced at about $70
million and "any losses will hit us hard,"
Lantratov said.
Khrunichev is the most prosperous of
Russia's space flagships, but its
fortunes depend largely on Western orders,
which have included not only Proton
launches, but also U.S.-funded construction
of a key module for the
International Space Station.
Washington has repeatedly accused Russian
companies of involvement in Iran's
alleged ballistic and nuclear weapons
programs, but has produced no evidence.
Last January, RKA chief Yury Koptev
announced that the Federal Security
Service, or FSB, had thwarted some attempts
by Russian organizations to sell
ballistic-missile technology to Iran,
but he refused to elaborate.
The FSB, which is the main successor
to the KGB, maintains that it keeps a
watchful eye on all Russian organizations
that possess such technologies or
produce any dual-use goods.
"They [Americans] never produce any
evidence because there could be
none," one serviceman at the FSB's central
staff said in a phone interview
Thursday.
"In this case they base their actions
on some kind of impressions they have
had, just like they bomb Iraq because
some pilot reported he believed he was
targeted by a radar," said this counterintelligence
officer, who asked not to
be named.
The quota of U.S. satellites launched
by Russian-made rockets has already
been set at 16 for this year, compared
to only four last year, said RKA
spokesman Konstantin Kreydenko. This includes
the nine by Proton rockets
and six by Soyuz rockets made by Progress.
Progress deputy director Vyacheslav
Vershigorov said in a phone interview he
"can only hope" that the United States
will not impose any sanctions that
would terminate a major source of revenues
for his plant. A Soyuz rocket is
scheduled to launch a Globalstar satellite
next month.
The space agency's Milov said the threatened
sanctions would affect not only
Russian companies, but also such U.S.
aerospace behemoths as Lockheed Martin.
In 1994, Lockheed Martin co-founded
the International Launch Service joint
venture together with Khrunichev and Moscow-based
Rocket Space Corporation
Energia to market launches of Protons
and U.S.-made Atlas rockets in the West.
In addition to losing hefty fees for
mediating launches of Russian-made
rockets, Lockheed Martin and other U.S.
aerospace companies would also have to
turn to more expensive U.S.-made rockets
if Proton launches are banned.
In addition to being cheaper, Proton
is also the only rocket capable of
putting a satellite into a geostationary
orbit, except for the U.S.-made
Titan-4 rocket, which the U.S. government
does not allow to be used for
commercial launches, according to Milov.
"It [the sanctions threat] is going
to fire back" at the U.S. space
industry, Milov said.
Nikolai Nosatenko, deputy director of
the Moscow region-based NPO
Mashinostroyenia, agreed.
"All these embargoes do not only contradict
the concept of a global free
market, which Americans have been always
preaching, but also deal a heavy blow
to Americans too," said Nosatenko, whose
enterprise has designed and
manufactured SS-19 Stiletto ballistic
missiles. NPO Mashinostroyenia is
currently trying to market launches of
satellites by converted SS-19s, both in
the United States and Europe.
In addition to sanctions, Russian rocket
launches of U.S. satellites are
also endangered by Moscow's failure to
clinch the so-called Technical Safeguards
Agreement with the United States.
The lack of such an agreement, which
is meant to prevent unauthorized
technology transfers on both sides, reportedly
may prompt the U.S. side to
cancel launches of more Globalstar satellites
by Soyuz rockets planned for
later this year.
Russian diplomats drafted and sent
a package of proposals on the
agreement to their U.S. counterparts one
month ago, Foreign Ministry spokesman
Vladimir Komolov said.
Unfortunately, Komolov said, the U.S.
side has rejected some of these
proposals.
Komolov acknowledged that the slow-paced
bureaucratic game may have had a
negative impact on Russian rocket launch
companies' efforts to win orders from
Western satellite operators.
Kazakstan is the world's eighth
largest country and could be its richest
per capita if its oil and mining potential
were fully tapped. The former
Soviet republic is thought to harbor fantastic
oil deposits in the Caspian
Sea. Its location between Russia and China
make it a useful ally to any
major power.
So useful, in fact, that the world's
remaining superpower may be willing to
overlook a decided lack of democracy.
That's exactly what human rights groups
accuse the US of doing.
They say that despite a sharp protest
about elections on Jan. 10, widely
considered unfair, Washington has been
soft on President Nursultan
Nazarbayev so as not to jeopardize oil
deals worth billions of dollars.
"The US has a lot of diplomatic means
to influence Kazakstan," says Yevgeny
Zhovtis, director of the Kazakstan International
Bureau for Human Rights
and Rule of Law, based in Almaty.
"But [Washington] was more interested
in the economic sphere than human
rights and democracy. They decided to
overlook small violations of human
rights and this gave President Nazarbayev
the impression he could do what
he wanted," he says.
Official results from the vote gave
the president more than 80 percent
support, electing him to another seven-year
term.
An oasis of stability
Under Nazarbayev's steerage, this
Central Asian state has been an oasis of
stability in a region otherwise known
for Islamic fundamentalism and
totalitarianism.
Despite widespread poverty in this nation
of 16 million people, he remains
popular.
The former steelworker turned Communist
party boss has led Kazakstan since
the Soviet collapse in 1991, winning plaudits
from the West for his
privatization reforms and friendliness
to the likes of Chevron and Mobil.
Crackdown on dissent
He started out fairly tolerant of
dissent. But the opposition says
Nazarbayev began to crack down four years
ago, and Washington was slow to
react to harassment of critics.
There have been increasing numbers of
beatings of opposition members and
independent journalists. Tax police have
bullied independent media, while
control of broadcasting has moved more
into the hands of the government and
Nazarbayev's daughter.
The US, which has spent $55 million
since 1992 on supporting political and
legal reforms in Kazakstan, insists that
democratization is a priority.
State Department officials assert that
there is no contradiction between
advocating political reform while securing
pipelines for Kazakstan that
would ensure its economic stability.
Indisputable was the State Department's
displeasure over the election,
which spokesman James Rubin said failed
to meet international standards of
fairness.
US signals displeasure
"The conduct of these elections
has set back the process of democratization
in Kazakstan and has made more difficult
the development of the important
relationship between our two countries,"
Mr. Rubin said in a Jan. 11
statement.
But for Nazarbayev's critics, deeds,
not words, were needed.
"I don't think the American government
did everything possible," says
Amirzhan Kosanov, spokesman of former
Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin.
Now the main opposition leader, he was
barred as a candidate on a minor
legal technicality.
Concern by the West came to a head when
Nazabayev brought elections forward
by two years, giving the opposition scant
time to campaign.
The disqualifying of Kazhegeldin, intimidation
of voters, and unequal media
access were slammed by Washington and
the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe.
In a sign of protest, the OSCE decided
not to send official international
observers to the election and has refused
to recognize the results.
Consternation boiled into outrage when
a Kazak employee of the US embassy,
who served as a liaison with human rights
groups, was badly beaten Dec. 22
by what were widely assumed to have been
progovernment attackers.
Enlisting the US press
The importance of the US was clear
to both Kazhegeldin and Nazarbayev, who
hired American public relations experts
and lobbyists to campaign as
actively in Washington as in Kazakstan.
While Kazhegeldin's Washington advisers
showered faxes on the American
press about abuses back home, Nazarbayev
took out a full page ad in The New
York Times and enlisted the help of a
consultancy firm, Western Strategy
Group, to press his case.
Nazarbayev had already won the hearts
and minds of oil companies
enthusiastic about the stable business
climate he created.
When asked about Nazarbayev's non-democratic
tendencies, American oil
executives murmured that they like to
remain above politics.
"We try to be neutral," says Phil Meek,
president of Chevron Munaigas Inc.
The company is helping build a pipeline
to Russia and develop the huge
Tengiz oil field, whose reserves are estimated
at 10 billion barrels.
Judy Thompson, coordinator of the OSCE's
local assessment mission, said
authorities had used the country's lack
of freedom of assembly to
intimidate opposition groups and had in
many cases openly backed
Nazarbayev's campaign.
Still, she believes there
wasn't much more the international community
could have done.
Next big test
Thompson says the next big test will
be parliamentary and local elections
later this year.
Signs are that the president believes
the power of oil will continue to
insulate him from Western criticism.
"There has not been a change so far
[in relations with the US]," says his
press secretary Lev Tarakov, making more
than a passing reference to direct
foreign investment worth $2 billion over
the past five years.
"A lot of American companies like the
conditions here," he says.
[Speaking this week to reporters in
Astana, a remote city on Kazakstan's
northern steppes which became the capital
a little more than a year ago,
Nazarbayev called the vote "historic"
and "a step toward democracy,"
according to the Reuters news service.]
[He pledged to "carry out reforms" to
overcome effects of the global
financial crisis on Kazakstan, "strive
toward a democratic society, combat
corruption, provide for mass media freedom,
and people's social
protection."]
[Nazarbayev gave a vote of confidence
to his prime minister, Nurlan
Balgimbayev, ahead of what promises to
be a tough year.]
[Some investors had been hoping to see
Mr. Balgimbayev go in favor of a
more reformist figure but others were
glad he was staying.]
["Both internal and external investors,
including large Western banks and
international financial institutions,
are now gaining confidence ahead of
the next seven years," said Aidar Akhmetov,
deputy head of Kazkommertsbank,
the country's biggest.]
Moscow, January 12 (Itar-Tass) -- The START-2
Treaty ratification
should be sped up so that the nuclear
arsenals be reduced in the framework
of law, holds Igor Sutyagin, a leading
expert of the Institute of United
States and Canada of the Russian Academy
of Sciences. He commented to Tass
on Tuesday [12 January] on the statement
of ex-director of the United
States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
Stansfield Turner, who urged the
United States and Russia to remove 1,000
warheads from missiles without
waiting for the START-2 Treaty ratification
and place them in storages
lying at a distance of 300 kilometres
from launch pads.
In an article published by the Los Angeles
Times on Monday, the ex-CIA
director asserts that delays with the
ratification of the START-2 Treaty in
Russia's State Duma cannot serve as a
pretext for hampering the process of
the elimination of surplus nuclear arms.
Admiral Turner describes his proposal
as an attempt at a quest for
optimum ways to strengthen security within
a brief period of time, while
admitting that his proposal is not radical
and means only that it will take
more time to ready these weapons for use.
Sutyagin who heads the military-technical
policy sector of the
military department of the Institute of
United States and Canada believes
the initiative merits attention as a fresh
step by Washington which had not
agreed to such proposals earlier.
At the same time he believes that there
is a multitude of problems
behind a seemingly easy solution to a
complicated international problem.
First of all, huge outlays will be needed
to build storages and transport
communications. While the United
States can build them without straining
its economy, Russia meets with budget
difficulties. Moreover, this method
of lowering nuclear danger does not guarantee
prompt destruction
(utilisation) of warheads, Sutyagin believes.
He views the US Congress' decision to
freeze the minimum of nuclear
charges at 6,000 units as one of the problems
involved in nuclear arsenals'
reduction. "This is a temporary decision
and will be annulled after the
State Duma ratifies START-2 Treaty, so
it is more expedient to rely on
legislation and to advance to the next
stage of reduction envisaged in
START-3 without rejecting other initiatives
to lessen nuclear danger,
including those that Turner describes
as nontraditional, Sutyagin said.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
13 January 1999
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Viktor Lapskiy: "'Fox'
Bares Its Fangs Again"
It looks as though the "Desert Fox"
US-British military operation in
Iraq has substantially complicated and
confused the situation in the
Persian Gulf region. Yet after all, knowing
Saddam Husayn's intransigent
and inflexible nature, its consequences
could have been calculated with no
special expenditure of scarce resources
of mental energy.
And so what do we have today?
"Desert Fox" should -- Washington and
London reckoned -- have forced Baghdad
to cooperate with the United Nations
in full and without any conditions. Exactly
the opposite situation has
arisen: The operation has untied
Saddam's hands after he lost over 1,000
of his elite guards in the flames of the
US cruise missiles. He has shown
the door to the commission of UN military
observers headed by the
Australian Richard Butler, whom he hates.
And he has given the United
Nations and its Security Council a hard
slap in the face, proving that
Butler was working not so much for the
esteemed international organization
as for the Pentagon and the US State Department.
And the international
team of inspectors entrusted to him has
been frankly engaged in espionage
for the past three years.
Baghdad has declared that henceforth
it does not recognized the zones
forbidden to Iraqi aircraft and will open
fire on foreign aircraft in its
own airspace. This week three American
aircraft have already come within
range of the Iraqi radars and have had
missiles fired at them.
The National Assembly in Baghdad
has urged the government to annul the
recognition of Kuwait which, let me remind
you, was occupied by Iraq in
1999. The refusal to recognize the
neighboring state essentially means a
state of war between them. The Kuwaiti
armed forces have been put on full
combat alert. Observers do not rule out
the possibility that after the end
of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan (which,
incidentally, requires that the
followers of the Prophet Muhammad show
restraint, friendliness, and love
for their neighbors) there will be Iraqi-Kuwaiti
clashes.
So what has "Desert Fox" achieved?
It is well known that Saddam
Husayn has accumulated rich experience
of turning his military defeats into
political victories. His positions
in the country have strengthened and
his prestige has increased. In the
eyes of his compatriots and the
citizens of several other Arab countries
he is now not the initiator of
aggression against a weak neighbor but
the proud victim of two military
giants who, grossly violating international
rules, attacked "peaceful"Baghdad.
And so the crisis over Iraq has
entered a new and more dangerous
phase. The operation which initially
seemed merely a diversionary maneuver
by Bill Clinton in his conflict with the
Senate over the "Monica Lewinsky
case" may be said to have acquired a global
nature with unpredictable
consequences. The hawks in Washington
and London are thirsting for blood
again. They are demanding that close observation
of Iraq from the air be
continued and that missile and bomb strikes
be delivered against everything
which seems suspicious to the pilots (during
the "Desert Fox" operation
missiles struck hospitals which US intelligence
officers suspected might
contain laboratories for the culture of
lethal viruses). British Premier
Tony Blair has stated the need for a second
round of "Desert Fox." As we
can see, the first stage of the military
operation has taught the generals
and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic
nothing.
A deadlock situation has taken shape
in the Persian Gulf zone. The
angry but self-confident Saddam does not
want to make any concessions,
criticizing even those who tried to stop
the attack on him. Many of the
world's capitals are cudgeling their brains
in an attempt to find a way out
of the deadlock.The Russian position is
known: Moscow favors the lifting of
the sanctions against Baghdad since after
all in November last year alone 8,000
Iraqis died from hunger and lack of medicines.
We favor the creation of a
monitoring system which will replace the
discredited UN Special Commission
and we favor the removal of its chief,
Richard Butler. The past eight
years have shown that the Iraq problem
cannot be resolved with the aid of
weapons and to deal with Iraq you must
choose the correct tone -- tough but
without military threats.
Political springtime in this country
in the past few years has generally
been marked by rising euphoria at the
prospect of a unification of Russia and
Belarus. Politicians of all colors brim
over with pretty talk about fraternal
friendship, Slavic unity and integration
of the post-Soviet expanse while new
historical charters and agreements are
signed to the accompaniment of bells
and church blessings, and shot glasses
shatter after toasts cementing the
intention.
It's really high time to sweep
up the broken glass and examine the prospects
with a clear head. I myself predict that
the latest paroxysm of Russian-
Belarussian passions, which began a little
early this time in late December,
will ultimately also demonstrate what
some observers have been saying for a
long time: Russia and Belarus will never
be fully unified in a single state.
Most 20th-century dictators were poorly
educated but possessed great
psychoanalytical skills, which are essential
in this exacting profession. The
"great Slav" Alexander Lukashenko is no
exception. He instinctively knows what
speech about integration he needs to dust
off in order to tickle the erogenous
zones of the collective subconscious of
the Russian political class at any
given time.
This "elite" of ours suffers from a
severe inferiority complex, phantom-like
onsets of great power delusions and obsessive
notions of some kind of "axis"
or a "strategic triangle" with various
nations.
President Boris Yeltsin also appears
keen to feature in the history books as
someone who unified nations into a great
power rather than just as the chief
executioner of the Soviet Union.
But despite its irksome habit of proffering
itself as a strategic partner to
just about anyone, this elite has never
found reciprocity. So naturally it was
easily lured by the skillful seducer of
Minsk.
Hands were freed for further matrimonial
embraces as the great Slav's
debts to Russia were written off and customs
controls were removed between the
two countries (unleashing a flood of contraband)
in the last couple of years. But
Moscow overlooked one thing: While he
used his rhetoric about unification to
rake in the political and economic dividends
from Moscow, Lukashenko began to
steadily create an authoritarian regime
and a new class necessary for his
survival - boyars who depend on him entirely,
compliant intellectuals and
oprichniki, or security chiefs, all of
whom quickly acquired a taste for power
and wealth in this small European state.
And to maintain this class, every
spring Lukashenko will have to come up
with fresh proposals for even more
grandiose and ridiculous creations like
a "transitional currency."
But the great integrator will never
agree to the most simple step of all,
namely the incorporation of Belarus into
the Russian Federation as one or
several of its subjects. Dictators never
agree to become provincial party
secretaries.
Proceeding not on the basis of reason
but irrational complexes, Moscow will
agree to any financially ruinous blunders.
The only hope now is that the old
cynic and chairman of the Central Bank
of Russia, Viktor Gerashchenko, will
not allow a single currency for the two
states to be emitted from two centers.
Because if that were the case, the Russians
would join the Belarussian nation
to face Lukashenko's famous grammatically
clumsy promise that "the people will
live poorly, but not [for] long."
Radiostantsiya Ekho Moskvy
7 January 1999
[translation for personal use only]
Studio interview with Vladimir Lukin,
Russian State Duma deputy
and Chairman of the Duma Committee
on International Affairs, by
Kseniya Larina; date not given -- live
or recorded
[Larina] Good evening. Our guest
today is Vladimir Petrovich Lukin.
[passage omitted: Christmas greetings;
Lukin recalls time as Russian
ambassador to United States; talks about
President Jackson's impeachment
and possible outcome of US Senate impeachment
trial of Clinton; in Lukin's
opinion, voting will depend on senators'
party affiliations]
In your view, if Clinton leaves his post
before the next elections,
how may this affect our relations at state
level?
[Lukin] You know, from the start, one
should differentiate between
government relations and those of a wider
nature. I think that, at
government level, little will change because
Al Gore will become President.
[Larina] Until the next elections?
[Lukin] Naturally. It is the job
of the Vice President in the UnitedStates.
[Larina] You mean, there will be no
early elections?
[Lukin] Absolutely not. [passage
omitted: Lukin talks about general
responsibilities of US Vice President]
As for Gore, he is, basically, a traditional
American liberal. He is a
patrician. He comes from the family
of a famous senator. He is a WASP, as
they say in the United States -- a white,
Anglo- Saxon Protestant American.
[Larina] Will he give us money?
[Lukin] As for money, it does not depend
on Gore alone. As one knows,
in the United States -- in this strange
country -- it is the Congress and
no-one else that is in charge of money.
Therefore it is a difficult
question. A lot depends on us.
We want to get money and, at the same
time, we want to show to the whole world
how bad the United States is. I,
too, often criticize the United States.
But there must be a certain balance
between these two things. We should
decide what we want more, because
pressing on both these pedals is like
pressing simultaneously on the
accelerator and the break pedal in a car
-- the result is unpredictable, as
one knows.Therefore it does not depend
on Gore as such. I think that Gore's
position would differ little from Clinton's
position. In a wider sense,
that would mean the sharp weakening of
government power -- executive power
-- and the strengthening of Congressional
power, up to the next elections.
What the next President is going to
be like still remains to be seen. As
President, Gore would not only be President
of the minority party -- the
Democrats are currently in a minority
in the Congress -- but he would be
President of a minority that has lost
and disgraced itself. The power of
Congressmen in both houses would be very
strong and Gore would not be able
to ignore it; he would have to take it
into account even more than Clintonnow.
As for the Congress, it has serious
problems as far as relations with
Russia are concerned. For instance,
we sell metal to the United States and
are being accused of dumping. It
is one thing if the government does it --
it includes this trade in metal in the
very wide sphere of US state
interests. So, when there are problems,
it may give us a nudge but, at the
same time, it will try to ensure that
things are not too bad in Russia so
that the country's nuclear arsenals are
in safe hands and the state can
continue working -- to some extent, at
least.
But Congressmen from those states that
produce metal -- Pennsylvania,
for example -- could not care less about
all that. Their task is to get
elected in two years' time, especially
in the lower house that holds
elections every two years. For that,
they need their metallurgical workers
-- not our Novolipetskiy or Cherepovetsk
metallurgical combines -- to sell
metal for a good price both inside and
outside the country. Can you see?
[passage omitted: Lukin talks about strong
and weak presidents; Nixon's
resignation; speculation about possible
consequences for Clinton of
impeachment, for example pension provisions]
Clinton is a very lucky President.
Moreover, he is an outstanding
President, judging by his achievements.
But one must say that he is a
tremendously lucky President. On
the one hand, under him the United States
is experiencing such prosperity -- I simply
cannot recall a period of such
prosperity in the past that was as long
and solid. When he came to power,
the United States was competing fiercely
with Japan and Europe. And now
the United States, without any doubt,
has become the first country in the
world, and the most powerful country in
the world with great possibilities,
including a balanced budget, and so on.
But it would be bizarre to say
that all that has been achieved by Clinton.
All that happened under
unlucky President Bush. [passage
omitted: more on Bush, and Clinton's
future prospects]
[Larina] Could you say a few words about
the Middle East problem?
What is your view of the situation? As
we all know, air strikes continue
there. What is your view on the
United States, bearing in mind, of course,
your special position as a State Duma
deputy -- you were very careful in
your comments when everyone else was condemning
it.
[Lukin] I spoke carefully not in the
sense that I was happy and
approved of what the Americans had done
there. I was talking about
something else. Perhaps I slightly
exaggerated the problem when I was
talking about the pedals. But we
must make a choice: either we, like
prophetic Varyag [referring to a song
about the Varyag cruiser whose
captain took the decision to sink the
ship rather than surrender to the
Japanese during the 1904 Russian-Japanese
war], press on one pedal or, like
Ivan Kalita [referring to 14th century
Russian prince], press carefully on
all the right pedals, as they say.
As for air raids, on the one hand, they
are absolutely unacceptable.
One cannot behave like this: I carry out
an air strike if I want to, or I
do not carry it out if I do not want to.
The problem is that no-fly zones
were established. The Iraqi side
is -- ostentatiously for the United
States -- violating these zones. It is
asking for it, as they say. The
Americans, particularly President Clinton,
are facing a dilemma. He might
be accused of being carried away by his
personal affairs -- his impeachment
and numerous lady friends -- and of ignoring
foreign affairs. So, from the
point of view of internal policy, there
is certain logic and reason in his
ordering planes to control the no-fly
zone. I can understand Clinton'slogic.
But, of course, such matters should
in principle be approached
differently. The UN Security Council
should meet and discuss them. An
agreement should be reached on reform
of the commission for monitoring
compliance [UNSCOM]. As far as I
know, everyone -- even the UN Secretary
General -- are insisting on this now.
Now a scandal implying spying within
the commission has broken out. If
I am asked for my opinion, I would say
that commissions of this sort consists
60-70 percent of spies, whatever
country they come from. I cannot
prove that, but I have some lifeexperience.
Therefore, there is talk that the commission
should be transparent and
subject to monitoring by UN employees
-- and there is such a problem, no
doubt. There is also the problem
of de- Americanizing the commission and
making it more international. There is
also the problem of [Richard]
Butler. I met Butler when he last
came here. I formed the impression that
he is a man who is too self-confident
-- he is over-confident with regard
to his own ideas. One should keep a lower
profile as the chairman of this
commission, in my view. Therefore,
collective effort is needed. For the
time being, these cowboy tricks -- downing
planes and chasing someone out
of a no-fly zone -- should be stopped.
[Larina] Thank you very much for coming
to see us during the holiday
period. Merry Christmas. [passage
omitted: exchange of Christmas
greetings and concluding remarks]
#9
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
January 14, 1999
DEFENSE CHIEF PRESSES AHEAD WITH SUPREME
STRATEGIC COMMAND.
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev
yesterday identified the creation of a "combined
supreme command" of the country's strategic
deterrence forces as the
military leadership's military reform
priority for 1999. "If we do not
create a more perfect combat control system,
our missiles, no matter how
many of them we have, will be no more
than decorations," Sergeev told a
conference of military journalists (Russian
agencies, January 13).
Russia's military and political elite are
currently embroiled in a heated
debate over the future of the country's
strategic nuclear forces. Stark
warnings that obsolescence will rapidly
diminish Russia's nuclear arsenal
over the next decade have led the government
and Defense Ministry to urge
ratification of the START II Treaty as
the only possible means of
maintaining some sort of nuclear parity
with the United States. In general,
however, both those who support and those
who oppose the treaty have called
for the government to implement an ambitious
strategic rearmament program.
Neither side has been able to explain
where the government will find the
funding for such an effort.
Sergeev's plan to create a strategic forces
supreme command--which would
place all of the country's strategic forces
under a single operational
command--is reported to be unpopular within
the military high leadership.
The country's General Staff, together
with the navy and air force commands,
are reportedly opposed to the plan because
it would entail a loss of their
own command authority. Russian President
Boris Yeltsin is nevertheless
reported to have approved the plan last
November, and Sergeev appears
determined to go forward with it (Profil,
November 23; Itogi, December 22).
The plan seems likely to further politicize
a senior officer corps already
disgruntled over force reductions and
other major organizational reforms.
They include a reduction in the number
of the country's military districts
and a consolidation of service branches
which will ultimately yield a
three-branch structure of land, air and
naval forces. The Soviet armed
forces traditionally had five service
branches; that number has been reduced
to four by combining the country's air
and air defense forces.
RUBLE STRENGTHENS AGAIN, BUT HARD-CURRENCY
RESERVES MELT AWAY. While the
Russian currency continues to strengthen
in relation to the U.S. dollar,
many observers remain skeptical that it
is anything more than a temporary
respite. The ruble, which dropped to 23.06
on Monday but strengthened to
22.58 on Tuesday, strengthened further
on Wednesday, hitting 21.80 to the
dollar. Yevgeny Yasin, Russia's former
economics minister, warned, however,
that the Central Bank's gold and hard
currency reserves are declining
dangerously. "The Central Bank's reserves
are melting away and won't last
for long," Russian news agencies quoted
Yasin as saying. Russia's reserves
had reportedly dropped to US$12.22 by
the end of last year, while the
country's money supply reportedly grew
4.2 percent during the week ending
January 5.
While Russian officials have tried to use
the ruble's sudden strength as
proof that the government is on the right
course and that it will hold to
the parameters laid out in its draft budget,
other indicators and analysis
suggest there has been no fundamental
break with the negative trends
triggered by last August's financial meltdown.
An Economist Intelligence
Unit report, released on January 12, stated,
first, that the outlook for the
world's transition economies next year
will "be dominated by the continuing
collapse in Russian output" and, second,
that "renewed inflation and
declining output" are "inescapable" for
Russia this year (Russian agencies,
January 12). Germany's Federal Statistic
Office, meanwhile, reported
yesterday that German exports to Russia
fell almost 27 percent in the third
quarter of 1998, after rising 43 percent
and 19 percent in the first and
second quarters of the year, respectively
(Reuters, January 13). And,
yesterday--in a sign that Russia remains
in dire straits when it comes to
revenues--the government imposed a five-percent
tax on natural gas, copper,
nickel, coal and other commodities exported
to countries outside the
Commonwealth of Independent States. The
Kremlin hopes that the measure will
help it raise more than US$1 billion (Russian
agencies, January 13).
A warning that tens of thousands
of illegal Russian immigrants may flood
into the EU bringing the local Mafia with
them has been delivered to Tony
Blair.
As Finland's Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen
visited Britain for talks with
Mr Blair, the full extent of the threat
has been spelt out.
Finnish government official Ari Heikkinen
told BBC News Online that,
without a comprehensive package of measures
aimed at bringing Russia closer
to the EU, agreements that keep the border
between the two countries secure
could collapse.
"That could see massive illegal immigration
from Russia into Finland and
then into the rest of Europe.
"They would inevitably bring with them
the Russian Mafia and other local
problems," he said. Finland is already
working closely with Britain and
Germany to agree a package of measures
to address the problem.
Powerful ally
The so-called "Northern Dimension"
plan aims to boost the local economy by
targeted investment in oil, gas, mining,
forestry and associated activities
throughout the Baltic and North west Russian
region.
The Finnish government sees Britain
as a powerful ally in its campaign to
have the problem recognised.
"We are very much relying on British
expertise because it has experience
and a realistic way of dealing with Russia
as we do," he said.
Finland has a huge, 1,269km long border
with North West Russia which
represents the greatest social and economic
divide in the EU.
Desperately poor Russians, suffering
from the collapse of the economy, are
living virtually alongside the relatively
affluent Finns.
Until now there has been little illegal
immigration and Finland has worked
with the Russians to maintain the border
guard system.
Second rate
The danger is that, with the EU
expanding, Russia will begin to see itself
as a second rate country being ignored
by its natural allies.
And if the economy continues to decline,
the gap between the Finnish
"haves" and the neighbouring Russian "have
nots" will grow.
"There is no longer any military threat
but we are afraid that people would
leave the country and start coming here,"
said Mr Heikkinen.
"That has never happened before but
there is now a risk that, for the first
time in Russian history that people want
to leave.
"The fear is of a massive illegal immigration
of Russians . That would
bring in the Russian Mafia with it.
"For the time being we have been lucky
because we have supported the
Russian border guard system because it's
in our interests.
Action plan
"If this system collapses there
is no way you can stop people coming in,"
he said.
He confirmed the Finnish government
was "working hard" with Britain and
Germany to address the problem.
Germany, which currently holds the six-month
presidency of the EU, will be
expected to produce a framework for action
which Finland, which takes over
the presidency in July, can complete.
But Mr Heikkinen stressed any package
must not create any new institutions
or add to the EU's existing budget.
"It will be difficult but the union
needs a policy that answers these
challenges of Russia. We need a common
strategy for Russia," he said.
http://www.russiatoday.com
Jan. 11, 1998
Russia's Economic Time Bomb
By Rod Pounsett
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's
methodology for pulling Russia out of
economic ruin still leaves a lot to be
desired, but he begins to deserve some
marks for effort.
He can claim several things to his credit.
To help the nation through a
tough winter, he has won some major humanitarian
assistance from the West, and
International Monetary Fund negotiators
are heading back to Moscow for further
talks about loans this month. The government's
budget proposals, although not
entirely the sort of package to win international
approval, seem to be getting
a safe ride through the Duma. And he is
winning support for his promises to
take a tough line with economic system
abusers and tax dodgers, although
revenues are still well down from what
is needed.
His leadership seems to have brought
a modicum of political stability, and
ordinary Russians are once again demonstrating
their stoicism in the face of
adversity. Demonstrations about unpaid
wages and other hardships have been
relatively sporadic and low-key, and he
has so far managed to escape direct
blame for the general worsening quality
of life in Russia.
But I am still concerned he is sailing
in the calm before another, and
perhaps worse, major storm.
Whatever optimistic messages President
Boris Yeltsin delivered over the
holiday period, the underlying economic
time bomb is still ticking. I also do
not think we should read much into the
seasonal shopping sprees Russians have
been on in Moscow and other cities during
the past weeks. Part of this had to
do with beating the new tax laws, but
it also showed Russians have not altered
their philosophy of living for today and
letting tomorrow bring what it may.
And while Primakov makes a lot of noise
about throwing out the rotten apples
and building a fairer, more law-abiding
and orderly environment, he still
seems stronger on words than deeds.
For example, the promised crackdown
on those thought to have been guilty of
pillaging the country's resources has
seen few actually in the courts and even
fewer in jail. Authorities make a lot
of noise about investigating such
allegations, but once these stories have
grabbed headlines, we hear little
about results.
A case in point is the widespread speculation
about billions of dollars
allegedly spirited away from the central
bank during the current crisis. In
late December, Interior Minister Sergei
Stepashin said that security forces
were conducting a detailed investigation
into the allegations. At the same
time, he did his best to play down the
extent of the alleged deficiencies in
state funds, although he did admit the
figures ran into billions of dollars.
Central bank officials estimated a $9
billion flight of capital abroad soon
after the August crisis erupted -- money
that has simply disappeared.
There were various rumors that central
bank officials had been lining their
own pockets out of IMF loans, or that
criminal elements among the country's
big business community were in on the
theft. We now have to wait and see if
the investigators, comprising officers
of the Federal Security Service, the
Prosecutor General's office and banking
experts, uncover the truth.
Unfortunately, Russian criminal investigations
involving big cash sums often
end up with little hard evidence being
offered against the accused. There have
even been rumors of deals being struck
behind closed doors in exchange for
amnesty for the alleged criminals.
A similar sort of atmosphere surrounds
investigations into large-scale tax
evasion.
If Primakov wants to restore lasting
confidence in authority, and
particularly in government, he will have
to produce some real convictions. Many
Russian suspect that the bigger the sums
involved and the richer the accused, the
more chance there is of the guilty getting
away. To them it smells of corruption,
or at least cowardice, in high places.
With such suspicions, it will be
difficult to get ordinary Russians to
comply with tax laws and other business
regulations.
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