July 19, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5353 • 5354 • 5355

Johnson's Russia List
#5355
19 July 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Guardian (UK) editorial: Get out of Chechnya: Russia is damaging its own interests.
2. The Guardian (UK): Jonathan Steele, Don't mention the war: When Blair and Bush sit down with Vladimir Putin in Genoa at the weekend, you can bet they won't bring up Chechnya. It's 15 months since the Russians captured Grozny, and now the world has quietly forgotten. But, finds Jonathan Steele, the killing goes on.
3. Rossia: Pavel Nikolaev, HOW TO PREVENT THE ISSUE OF CHECHNYA FROM
COMING UP AT THE G-8 SUMMIT. Putin is concerned about what the G-8 will
say on Chechnya.
4. Alexander Andreyewsky: Re: Mikheyev's Intelligentsia Disservice/5352.
5. Moscow Times editorial: Kremlin Adopts a New Spin.
6. Moscow Times: Alla Startseva, Study: 10 Firms Have 40% of Exports.
7. The Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomiuri (Japan): Naomi Tajitsy, The charm
of Russia's Cheburashka.
8. Reuters: EBRD chief urges Russia to scrap energy monopolies.
9. Los Angeles Times: John Daniszewski, Far East Void Eats at Russia. Chinese immigrants find opportunity in the fertile emptiness of Siberia. But hosts fear a gradual takeover. One says, "We are becoming their slaves."
10. AP: Zhirinovsky Confirms Jewish Roots.
11. New York Times: Michael Gordon, Pushing Agenda for ABM's, Bush
Prepares to Meet Putin.]

*******

#1
The Guardian (UK)
19 July 2001
Editorial
Get out of Chechnya: Russia is damaging its own interests

When Vladimir Putin joins the G7 summit in Genoa next weekend, he will
present himself as the leader of a newly assertive, modernising and
democratic Russia, jealous of its rights but ready and willing to cooperate
with the west.

Mr Putin particularly likes to stress Russia's credentials as a European
power. He has devoted much recent effort to building relationships with
Germany, France, and with Tony Blair. This is calculated to offset American
influence in Europe, especially US plans to expand Nato eastwards. And Mr
Putin is no doubt greatly enjoying the EU's arguments with the Bushmen over
climate change, defence and trade.

If anybody in Genoa doubts he is a serious player, Mr Putin can point to
Moscow's new friendship treaty with China. The president's message is that
under his leadership, Russia is back in the global power game. And he
expects Russia to be treated with respect.

This is problematic for one very good reason: Chechnya. It is possible,
perhaps, to overlook Mr Putin's authoritarian tendencies at home, for
example his war on press freedom. In the interest of good relations, it may
be expedient to turn a blind eye to his unhelpful meddling in Kosovo, his
wrecking of Britain's Iraqi sanctions initiative, his Ukraine manipulations
and his contentious Middle East and east Asian arms trading. But in
Chechnya, Mr Putin goes too far.

What is happening there now, today, as has so often been the case since he
launched the 1999 war that helped him win the presidency, amounts to state
terrorism. The Russian army and paramilitary gangsters, the kontraktniki ,
are out of control and running riot, as Jonathan Steele's report from
Sernovodsk in yesterday's Guardian made clear.

This is not about suppressing bandits and criminals, if it ever was. Claims
that abuses are properly investigated are risible. The systematic
victimising of defenceless civilians, masquerading as "counter-terrorism",
cannot be countenanced by western leaders who subscribe to universal human
rights. Nor can they ignore it (much as they try). Mr Putin must stop these
excesses right now, pull the troops out, and let the UN, the OSCE and aid
agencies in. If he will not, then he must stop pretending to lead a modern,
democratic European state and stay away from Genoa. Mr Putin will not win
the respect he craves while this appalling behaviour continues. Such
sentiments are not "anti-Russian"; they are pro-people.

*******

#2
The Guardian (UK)
19 July 2001
Don't mention the war: When Blair and Bush sit down with Vladimir Putin in
Genoa at the weekend, you can bet they won't bring up Chechnya. It's 15
months since the Russians captured Grozny, and now the world has quietly
forgotten. But, finds Jonathan Steele, the killing goes on.
By Jonathan Steele

There are two routes to Grozny. One goes along potholed main roads through a
series of Russian army checkpoints where travellers get shaken down for
whatever the soldiers think the market will bear. Twenty roubles (50p) is the
standard 'toll" per passenger, though if the troops are feeling greedy or
think you suspicious, you may be kidnapped for ransom or detained and beaten
up. Every military camp has a 'zindan", or pit, where prisoners are held.

So Chechens, particularly if they are male and young, prefer the other
approach. Cars and taxis bump across fields of shoulder-high sunflowers or
ripening corn. The double set of flattened dirt tracks in the magnificent
rolling downs of the north Caucasus, where Tolstoy and Lermontov once spurred
their horses, are easily visible to any helicopter. But Russian ground troops
do not bother to block them, or perhaps they are afraid to be out in the
countryside.

Near the outskirts of the Chechen capital, barely an hour after leaving the
nearby Russian republic of Ingushetia, Murat my driver emerges on to the
highway for a few miles before plunging into the side streets of Grozny to
avoid the checkpoints that cluster along the main drag with their camouflage
netting, sandbags, and the Russian tricolour flag on top.

For foreign reporters, a third way to reach Grozny is to go on an organised
trip. But this route has become a kind of official kidnap and few journalists
take it. You see little, you cannot talk to Chechens without an escort, and
the Russian military charges up to Dollars 840 for the helicopter ride. As a
result, Russia's war on Chechnya has virtually dropped off the international
media map.

It is a pity since, although President Putin has declared victory and almost
appears to have convinced western gov ernments he is right, that is not the
picture you get on the ground, or which the latest death statistics suggest.
Fifteen months after the Russians captured Grozny and other key Chechen
cities, after the most ferocious artillery barrages in Europe since the
second world war, the rate of killing is climbing again.

Memorial, a respected Russian human rights watchdog, estimated the number of
civilians killed summarily by Russian forces or arrested and later found dead
this January as 31. In May, a few weeks after the Council of Europe ended its
suspension of Russia's voting rights on the grounds that the human rights
situation was improving, the number of deaths was up to 60. In June it
reached 84. Memorial uses conservative criteria to calculate its figures, and
the true death toll is probably much higher.

Grozny has become a jungle. Pictures of a city of rubble, like Dresden in
1945, remain so strong in the mind that you are stunned to discover a new
reality. After two summers of luxuriant growth, a wasteland of war has been
conquered by weeds. Huge bushes and creepers flank the roads. 'That was where
the Republican Hospital used to be," Murat explains as we drive slowly past
what I assumed was a park. The entrance of the accident and emergencies
depart ment is still standing, but with the rest of the building long gone it
looks more like a rural bus stop.

The palace of Chechnya's rebel president Aslan Maskhadov, on which the
Russians were so determined to hoist their flag, was razed to the ground by
massive shelling. Other ministries as well as the once-renowned Oil Institute
are like trellises of concrete, with vegetation climbing into the holes where
roofs, floors, and windows used to be.

This jungle image is also a metaphor for what passes for life in Grozny, with
the Russian military cast as the carnivorous prowlers, moving around in their
armoured personnel carriers with bandanas round their heads, glinting
sunglasses, and Kalashnikovs at the ready.

There is no electricity or phone system. The Russians have restored some gas
lines but residents push carts with wood for cooking and queue with buckets
to buy water from Russian tankers. Look up at the blast-shattered high-rise
housing estates, and you struggle to spot even one or two flats with windows
and curtains and some sign of life. Shops no longer exist, and all trading is
done in ramshackle kiosks.

'People are living here," says a hand-scrawled sign in chalk on the fence of
a single-storey wooden cottage in a side street. Fatima Mukayeva is a young
doc tor at City Hospital number 10. She and her mother and her elderly
grandparents left Grozny for the refugee camps of Ingushetia along with tens
of thousands of other residents when the Russian artillery started to rain on
the city in October 1999. 'We came back in May 2000, because grandpa couldn't
survive in a tent."

They found the hospital half-ruined, so she and other returning colleagues
were forced to reduce it to an outpatients clinic. 'We cleared out the rubble
and got it going again. There is no medicine but each of the staff buys
bandages and other things at the chemist to give patients." Fatima is lucky.
She has a job ( her pay is 560 roubles, or pounds 14, a month) and there is a
tap nearby in the yard of a destroyed house across the road, where her family
can get water free.

The Russians claim to have earmarked some 14,000 million roubles ( pounds
350m) to 'restore" Chechnya, but apart from gas supplies, few people in
Grozny claim to have seen any results from it. Astonishingly, the city's food
aid is all funded by foreign donors, including the European Union and the
United Nations' world food programme. Most is delivered by Chechens working
for the Danish Refugee Council, since it is still considered too dangerous
for foreigners to work in Grozny. The main hospital was rehabilitated by the
International Committee of the Red Cross.

Moscow is at least paying pensions to those elderly people who are
registered. It would like Chechnya's refugees to return, if only to prove the
war is over. But few have gone back and the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees estimates Grozny's population at 67,000, less than a sixth of
what it used to be. The Russian government tempted refugees with promises of
compensation or materials to rebuild their homes, but the first pilot scheme
collapsed. 'We went in a convoy of buses and lorries from here in April,"
says Koka Ireziyeva, a refugee in Karabulak camp in Ingushetia. 'They gave us
food for 10 days but after three months we got no compensation so we came
back."

The European Union has rebuilt 1,700 houses throughout Chechnya since last
November, but mainly outside Grozny in villages that were relatively
undamaged. 'There's no donor support for massive intervention. There is a
feeling that the Russian government should play a part," says Jean Tissot,
the Danish Refugee Coun- cil's programme manager. 'I've never seen any
written Russian plan for reconstruction."

The lack of security guarantees is the greatest deterrent to refugee return.
The latest atrocities in western Chechnya, when Russian troops rounded up all
the males in three villages and beat many of them, created new nervousness.
Eighteen months ago, when the Russians first moved in, visitors to Grozny
reported that some Chechens welcomed the prospect of order after the
lawlessness and kidnappings of the previous years. Now it is hard to find any
Chechens who support the Russians. Even the Chechens appointed by the
Russians to leadership posts have started to protest publicly at Russian
behaviour.

'They fired a grenade into the central market yesterday," says Erna Susayeva,
who works in a nearby cafe in Grozny. 'One woman died instantly. Others
rushed in here. Three people were wounded." Two days later the Russians
'closed" Grozny, blocking all traffic and doing house-to-house searches. In
June, after a similar search of a block of flats, the Russians took 19 men
away. 'The women went to the camp and stayed outside for two days until they
released them, barely alive," she says.

There is no way to check her account, but the Russians are clearly nervous.
Akhmad Kadyrov, the top Chechen official appointed by Moscow, operates from
Gudermes, 32km east of Grozny. In May, the Russians proclaimed the government
would move to the capital, but reversed the decision 10 days later.
'Conditions for the government to work safely in Grozny have not been
created," Nikolai Patrushev, head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB,
explained. At the same time, Sergei Ivanov, the defence minister, announced a
halt in the much-trumpeted troop withdrawals from Chechnya after only 5,000
of the estimated garrison of 80,000 men had left.

In spite of the pervasive fear, an amazing number of Chechens are willing to
test the Russian claim to be restoring law and order by complaining to the
authorities when Russian forces abuse them. 'I have nothing to lose except my
life, and I don't treasure it much. I have been disabled," says a 51-year-old
former teacher in Grozny. He was held by Russian troops for three months,
ferociously beaten, and had his left ear cut off. 'I cannot teach any more.
The kids stare and laugh," he adds, as he displays letters he has written to
the Russian prosecutor's office and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General.

The Chechen guerrillas can still mount hit-and-run attacks, mining roads and
ambushing convoys. Russian soldiers and special police are dying at a rate of
about 10 a week. But although the guerrillas have frequently promised to
recapture Grozny, many symbolic deadlines have passed with no action. The
latest one is next month, the fifth anniversary of their surprise seizure of
the capital during the previous war. Weeks later, the Russians gave up.
'There's no chance of repeating that," says Sasha Petrov, a Russian human
rights worker who regularly interviews Chechens who move between Chechnya and
Ingushetia. 'People are desperately tired. The fighters don't have enough
men. There's no drive left."

Will Tony Blair and other western leaders mention the atrocities and the
Russian failure to give adequate aid to civilians when they dine with
Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit in Genoa this weekend? Almost certainly not,
except in the blandest lip-service terms. George Bush was gushy and fulsome
with Putin at their first summit last month in Slovenia . Blair, who rushed
to St Petersburg when Boris Yeltsin first appointed Putin to succeed him,
considers himself the Russian president's special friend.

For politicians, summit bonhomie is always a prized goal. What with Bush's
determination to push his missile defence scheme and expand Nato towards
Russia's border, and continuing differences over the Balkans and Iraq,
western leaders have decided to lower the pressure on Chechnya. 'Don't
overload the circuits," is the diplomatic refrain. Out of sight, and all but
out of mind, the jungle will go on devouring Grozny for some time to come.

******

#3
Rossia
July 19, 2001
HOW TO PREVENT THE ISSUE OF CHECHNYA FROM COMING UP
AT THE G-8 SUMMIT
Putin is concerned about what the G-8 will say on Chechnya
Author: Pavel Nikolaev
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
ALMOST ALL SENIOR OFFICIALS OF THE RUSSIAN SECURITY MINISTRIES HAVE LEFT FOR CHECHNYA TO INVESTIGATE RECENT SEARCH OPERATIONS IN CHECHEN VILLAGES. THEY WILL HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THE RESULTS OF THEIR INVESTIGATION BEFORE THE START OF THE G-8 SUMMIT. BESIDES, PUBLIC OPINION IN RUSSIA IS WAVERING.

It seems that Vladimir Putin is worried by the current events in
Chechnya. He met yesterday with Victor Kazantsev, presidential envoy
for the Southern federal district. The envoy reported the situation in
the Caucasus to the president. Their meeting was as serious that
Kazantsev had to cancel a press conference which was to have been held
after the end of the meeting. In addition Justice Minister Yuri Chaika
left for Chechnya on July 18.

It is no coincidence that the Russian leadership is worried by
the situation in Chechnya. The federal forces conducted several search
operations in the Achkhoi-Martan district in early July - which,
according to local residents, were too harsh. Chechens complained
about the activities of the federal forces and started hunger-strikes.

As a result the command of the federal forces had to acknowledge
that Russian troops had committed serious abuses against Chechen
civilians. A special commission for investigating the activities of
Russian troops in the villages of Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk was
created in Chechnya.

The Russian president's concern about the recent events in
Chechnya has rather serious political grounds. It was the counter-
terrorist operation in the North Caucasus that became Vladimir Putin's
calling card in 1999 when he tried to restore the image of the Russian
military. However, the recent search operations have stirred up
Russian public opinion. There is a threat that Russian society will
oppose the combat operation in Chechnya like in 1995.

It should not be forgotten that in the near future Vladimir Putin
will have to attend the G-8 summit in Genoa. It is evident that the
Russian president does not want to discuss the issue of Chechnya with
the leaders of the world's countries. Russia has many foreign affairs
problems, and the negative attitude of the international community to
the activities of Russian troops in Chechnya does not contribute to
their solution.

Senior military officials have been sent to Chechnya to figure
out what happened there. Konstantin Totsky, Director of the Federal
Border Guard Service, left for Chechnya two days ago. Justice Minister
Yuri Chaika arrived in the republic yesterday. Totsky will inspect
Russian border guard troops, and Chaika will check the Chechen
judiciary.

It is very likely that the defense minister, the interior
minister and the director of the Federal Security Service will visit
Chechnya in the near future. It is not out of the question that Victor
Kazantsev will visit the republic after his meeting with the
president. In any case, the federal command will have to announce the
results of the investigation before the start of the G-8 summit
because world leaders will surely ask President Putin about Chechnya.

(Translated by Alexander Dubovoi )

*******

#4
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001
From: Alexander Andreyewsky <aleband@attglobal.net>
Subject: Re: Mikheyev's Intelligentsia Disservice ((JRL 5352)

Dear David,

Speaking for myself, I must say that it was nice to learn that
Dmitry is alive and well.
His piece, however, is rather puzzling, to say the least.
Leaving aside the Polyanna about things being slanted toward the
"positive" or the "negative," the focus of JRL and students
of Muscovy past,present, and future is on the underlying facts,
no matter how they may grab one at any particular time or in
any particular circumstance.
Being similarly in a position to read both Russian and English
sources on a daily basis, I am guilty of a diametrically opposite
impressions than Dmitry's. As for the "intelligentsia" testing the
"mushroom tactic" (keep them in the dark and so forth...) on trusting
foreigners, the concern is a bit of an overused cliche in the age
of the Internet.
If Chechnya is Russia's "internal affair," growing government
control of the media is true "freedom of the press" and the upcoming
single-candidate presidential election in its satellite state an instance
of "representative democracy" in action, then we all owe Dmitry a debt
of gratitude for opening our eyes to the power of positive thinking.
My final concern is with failing to grasp the benefits of being aware
that Russian-language publications like "Expert, Kompania, Vedomosti,
Finansovaia Rossia,Biznes Akademia do not participate in the debate either"?
What "debate," may I ask?

******

#5
Moscow Times
July 19, 2001
Editorial
Kremlin Adopts a New Spin

Many have been struck by the seeming openness with which the Kremlin is
handling the Kursk salvage operation. Nearly a hundred journalists have
been shipped to the Kursk site on a special press boat. The engineers in
charge of the operation have given news conferences and released computer
simulations. A special web site, www.kursk.strana.ru, has been set up.

Kremlin press handlers boast that this operation will prove that the Putin
administration has learned the bitter lessons of its PR fiasco when the
submarine sank last August. "We have invited the world's journalists to see
what's going on here in the Barents Sea to show we have nothing to hide
with this operation," said Igor Botnikov, the Kremlin press officer
accompanying journalists to the site of the operation.

There are other manifestations of the new openness as well. President
Vladimir Putin held an open news conference Wednesday attended by more than
500 journalists who merely had to call in advance to get access to the head
of state, rather than passing through the usual gauntlet of stone-faced
bureaucrats who appear specially trained to ignore ringing telephones and
who only work on the third Tuesday of each odd-numbered month from 11:15
a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Could it really be that a fresh wind is blowing through the Kremlin? We
doubt it.

Instead, what we are seeing is the deft touch of Kremlin spokesman Sergei
Yastrzhembsky, a touch he mastered while he was charged with restricting
media access to the conflict in Chechnya. When federal forces renewed the
fighting there in late 1999, the creation of the Russian Information
Center, headed by Yastrzhembsky, was an integral part of the plan. And for
more than a year it did an admirable — if that is the right word — job of
preventing any information from filtering out of the war zone.

Yastrzhembsky was rewarded for his information-management skills by being
put in overall charge of Kremlin press relations. The results have been
startling. On one hand, information about atrocities in Chechnya has
proliferated in recent months, and the government "message" from the war
zone has been decidedly less monolithic than it was when Yastrzhembsky
ruled the roost.

On the other, Putin's press relations generally have grown slicker, with
numerous choreographed events for Russian and foreign journalists and, now,
the stage-managed openness of the Kursk operation.

But we won't be convinced that anything has changed until we see how the
Kremlin handles the next urgent, unanticipated situation. Only then will we
know whether openness is a new policy or just a clever public-relations
facade.

******

#6
Moscow Times
July 19, 2001
Study: 10 Firms Have 40% of Exports
By Alla Startseva
Staff Writer

The value of Russia's exports topped $100 billion for the first time last
year, with the top 10 exporters accounting for 40 percent of the total,
according to a new ranking released Wednesday.

Unusually high prices for raw materials, especially oil, fueled the nearly
50 percent jump over the $73 billion in exports Russia produced in 1999,
according to the ranking compiled by ratings agency Expert RA with the help
of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and the Moscow International
Business Association.

While the volume of exports rose just 5 percent in 2000, revenues jumped 71
percent, according to Expert magazine.

Company Field 2000 Export Turnover (million $) Year-on-Year Growth

1. Gazprom Oil and Gas $15.933 billion 53.1%
2. LUKoil Oil and Gas $5.7138 billion 94.9%
3.Yukos Oil and Gas $5.2475 billion 105.9%
4. TyumenOil Co. Oil and Gas $3.4775 billion 181.3%
5. Tatneft Oil and Gas $2.629 billion 175.8%
6. Norilsk Nickel non-ferrous metals $2.2469 billion 22.4%
7. Russian Aluminum non-ferrous metals $2.1616 billion -11.8%
8. Surgutneftegaz Oil and Gas $1.7005 billion 126.6%
9. Sibneft Oil and Gas $1.6999 billion 78.9%
10. Rosneft Oil and Gas $1.2945 billion 72%
11. Severstal ferrous metals $1.0671 billion 21.9%
12. Slavneft Oil and Gas $1.0181 billion 112.1%
13. Alrosa non-ferrous metals $877.4 million 20.1%
14. Novolipetsk Metals Combine ferrous metals $866 million 39.9%
15. Bashneft Oil and Gas $858.7 million 34.2%
16. Magnitogorsk Metals Combine ferrous metals $849.2 million 25.1%
17. Onako Oil and Gas $681.6 million 64.8%
18. Sidanko Oil and Gas $662.3 million 99.7%
19. Itera Oil and Gas $657.1 million -47.5%
20. TVEL car builder $571 million 57.7%

Over 70 percent of export revenues for the top 100 companies came from the
oil and gas sector, with the metals industry bringing in 19 percent, the
chemicals industry 4.5 percent and heavy machinery producers 3.3 percent.

The indisputable leader once again was Gazprom, which exported $15.9
billion worth of gas in 2000 — 15 percent of the national total and nearly
three times more than runner-up LUKoil. Rounding out the top five were oil
majors Yukos, TNK and Tatneft.

Metals giants Norilsk Nickel and Russian Aluminum, at sixth and seventh
respectively, broke up the chain of fuel companies: Surgutneftegaz, Sibneft
and Rosneft rounded out the top 10.

Top steel producer Severstal was No. 11, while the TVEL corporation, which
builds equipment for nuclear power plants, was No. 20 with exports worth
$571 million. The largest chemical and petrochemical exporter, according to
the rating, was Bashneftekhim, ranked 24th overall.

Domestic auto king AutoVAZ was 29th, while national power grid Unified
Energy Systems was 33rd, sending $212 million worth of electricity abroad
in 2000.

Expert RA general director Dmitry Grishankov said many companies are still
reluctant to disclose information, so one of the major objectives of the
list was to codify available data on the current conditions and prospects
for increasing exports, which have been the engine for economic growth.

Grishanov said another goal was to help Russia's corporate image. "Russian
companies have a very bad reputation in the world," he said. "There is an
information barrier — reliable information doesn't reach Western
countries," he added.

Apart from the top 100 rankings, Expert RA presented corporate awards for
exporters in a variety of categories based on the decisions of a panel that
included Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Mikhail Medvedkov
and AmCham president Andrew Sommers.

Siberian-Urals Petrochemical Co., or Sibur, for example, won for "most
dynamic development" — an obvious choice considering the company posted a
ridiculous-sounding 74,608.33 percent growth in exports last year.

With clients in 91 countries, Severstal won awards for having the "biggest
client base" and the "widest geographical" operations.

Novolipetsk steel won for largest number of individual shipments abroad
(18,074), while AvtoVAZ, Kazan Helicopter Plant and Sibur shared the award
for most active marketing policy.

Expert RA panelist Yevgeny Gavrilenko, who heads the Bureau of Economic
Analysis, praised the ratings and awards as a "first step" toward improving
the export potential of Russian companies. "In the coming years, however,
the ratings must include estimations of how companies use their export
potential and revenues," he added.

MICEX general director Alexander Zakharov recommended that the ratings
include the market capitalization of companies as a tool for portfolio
investors.

*******

#7
The Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
July 19, 2001
The charm of Russia's Cheburashka
BY NAOMI TAJITSU, DAILY YOMIURI STAFF WRITER

Russian media critics weren't very happy when Russian television
broadcaster ORT announced at the beginning of the year that it would begin
airing Pokemon. So began a sort of backlash against the squeaking yellow
wonder that resulted in ORT broadcasting a special on Pokemon's cultural
merits and how much the program drew from Japanese culture.

Cheburashka is to Russian culture what Pikachu (and Doraemon, Sazaesan and
basically any of Osamu Tezuka's creations) is to its Japanese counterpart.
The proportionately challenged hero (think a furry, wider-eyed and
generally cuter variation of Italian animation icon Toppo Gigio) was
immortalized first in books written by children's writer Eduard Upensky and
later in film adaptations in the late 1960s and early '70s.

The difference between Pikachu and Cheburashka, though, is that
Cheburashka, the most famous Russian folk character in recent decades, was
never intended as a product of mass production, whereas Pokemon largely
owes its popularity to media saturation and ruthlessly cunningmarketing.
Sozuzmultfilm, Russia's largest animation studio, launched during the
Soviet era and more or less dormant today, produced only four live-action
Cheburashka animation films (the fourth was produced in the early '80s).
Three will be screened in Japan.

No one seems to know for certain exactly what Cheburashka is. What they do
know is that he arrives in a Soviet town, asleep inside a crate of oranges
from Africa. When a fruit vendor tries to find a home for Cheburashka at
the local zoo, he is turned away, simply because the zookeeper isn't sure
what species Cheburashka is. For a while, Cheburashka makes do in a
telephone booth, where one morning he finds a want ad for friends. It turns
out that the ad's been written by Gena, a lonely crocodile who works at the
zoo and plays the accordion, and the two, along with other local misfits,
quickly form a tight network of friends. Before long, they've built a place
where everyone can play and Cheburashka can live.

The episodes contain a fair amount of Soviet ideology; Shapoklyak, the
mischievous pointy-nosed granny whose voice is provided by a man, is a
former KGB spy who pulls off cunning pranks one after the other and claims
that fame doesn't come to those who simply strive to do good. And even on
Gena's birthday, he and Cheburashka attempt to gain acceptance by the
Communist youth brigade, Komsomol, which at first refuses them because
they've never accomplished Boy Scout-esque feats like making birdhouses or
starting fires with sticks. Eventually, it's the playground they build for
the neighborhood children that wins them the brigade's approval, proving
that attempts to benefit the greater good don't go unrewarded.

The sets are charmingly lo-tech; stop-motion movements bring the puppet
characters to life, and 3-D buildings line streets while in the background
stand 2-D trees. Depth of field is offered in the form of the character's
movements; when Gena rushes to where Cheburashka has flown away hanging on
to a helicopter, he first appears in the background as a shadow, only to
take form as he approaches his friend. Camera work is basic and limited to
the odd close-up. But the special effects are endearing, like the bubbles
that rise from the surface of the ocean when Gena jumps in to search for
unwanted metal parts to donate to the youth brigade, and the way movement
is shown by rotating 2-D backgrounds.

To be sure, the technology involved in creating each episode of Cheburashka
is a far cry from that of Pokemon, but that, of course, is its appeal. And
although Cheburashka and his friends may never be able to compete with
Pikachu and Satoshi here in Japan, somehow, the charm of a furry
monkey/bear-like character seems more sincere than that of a slick yellow
mouse that squeaks and has a history of causing seizures in small children.

The movie opens July 21.

*******

#8
EBRD chief urges Russia to scrap energy monopolies

BRUSSELS, July 19 (Reuters) - Russia is making good progress in luring back
foreign investors but needs to tackle monopolies in its key energy sector,
the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said
on Thursday.

"Russia is still rebuilding investor confidence after the 1998 (financial)
crash...but the message being sent is a positive one. Confidence is coming
back to Russia," Jean Lemierre told a gathering hosted by the European Policy
Centre, a Brussels-based think-tank.

Lemierre cited a series of laws approved in the last week by Russia's lower
house of parliament, the State Duma. These include a new land code and laws
on partial currency liberalisation and combating money laundering.

"The new foreign investment is perhaps less in volume than in 1997, when
capital inflows were very fragile and short-term. But now it is better
quality investment, aimed more at the long-term in industry," Lemierre said.

He cited a recent decision by U.S. auto giant General Motors <<A
HREF="aol://4785:GM">GM.N</A>> to make a big investment in Russia with EBRD
support.

Lemierre said half of the 125,000 loans made by the EBRD to central and
eastern Europe had gone to Russia over the past decade. But he added that
Russia should be less coy about opening up its energy sector to more
competition.

"They have monopolies in gas and electricity. But it is better to have plenty
of competition," he said.

Asked later about Russia's hopes for joining the World Trade Organisation,
Lemierre told Reuters: "There is a real political will in Russia to promote
reforms and to improve the situation."

Lemierre said the key to success in Russia and other ex-communist countries
ranging from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to candidate countries for European
Union membership like Poland was "good governance in both the public and
corporate sectors."

"Only good governance can attract the necessary investment," he said.

"You don't get the money if there is no transparency. You don't get the money
if you don't fight against asset stripping or protect minority shareholders'
rights," Lemierre said.

The London-based EBRD is the main international lending agency in Eastern
Europe, mainly devoted to loans for private sector projects.

******

#9
Los Angeles Times
July 19, 2001
COLUMN ONE
Far East Void Eats at Russia
Chinese immigrants find opportunity in the fertile emptiness of Siberia.
But hosts fear a gradual takeover. One says, "We are becoming their slaves."
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI, Times Staff Writer

BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Russia -- Xu Yan remembers what she felt when she first
entered the Far East of Russia from her native China 10 years ago and saw
the empty green land stretching forth in every direction.

"I was amazed--such a waste," she recounted recently. "I thought: 'This
land is good, but no one cultivates it. How can you possibly live on the
land, and not work it?' "

At the time, Russia and China were just opening up to each other again
after having fought a series of border skirmishes in the 1960s and '70s.
Xu, who had studied Russian, was coming to Russia as part of a delegation
to do business. But that first impression of space and waste never left her.

Today, the 39-year-old Chinese citizen--who now calls herself Natalya--can
be found in her leased field, directing a brigade of Russian and Chinese
farm workers, planting watermelons, cabbages and tomatoes in the rich black
soil of Russia.

But to many people in Russia, this hard-working, straw-hatted woman is the
epitome of what they most fear: a gradual Chinese takeover of the huge
chunk of Russia that is underdeveloped, underutilized and underpopulated.

In fact, one of Russia's foremost fears is that it might lose control of
Siberia and the Far East in the new century.

On Monday, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Vladimir V.
Putin signed a 20-year friendship treaty that makes the countries
officially strategic partners and lays to rest 99% of their border
disputes. But Russians are not wholly reassured. Many still fear that
Russian political and economic influence will wane in the Far East in
future decades, while Chinese influence will rise.

Behind the fear is the fact that since the 1980s, China has been booming
technologically, militarily and in population. And Russia has been falling
behind--particularly in Siberia.

Putin noted the threat when he dropped in on this city bordering China last
year. "If you do not take practical steps to advance the Far East soon," he
told residents, "after a few decades, the Russian population will be
speaking Japanese, Chinese and Korean."

Some people say it is coming true already. Alexei Barsukov, an unemployed
37-year-old on a derelict collective farm outside Blagoveshchensk, said of
the Chinese, "Slowly, we are becoming their slaves."

For most of its course, the 1,800-mile-long Amur River serves as the
boundary between the countries. North of the river, in Russia's Amur
region, is a wilderness beautiful to behold. Slightly smaller than
California, it holds deposits of gold and other valuable minerals, and
hundreds of thousands of acres of timber-rich forest, with stretches of
rich plains ideal for farming.

A shrinking population of about 1 million people lives on it. Just to the
south, in China's Heilongjiang province, 38 million people are crowded onto
the Manchurian plain, farming every available acre.

The bigger picture is the same. China's population of 1.2 billion compares
with 16 million Russians living in all of eastern Siberia and the Russian
Far East--an area larger than all of China. Given such imbalance, Russians
themselves wonder if simple population pressure might one day cause China
to reassert now-dormant historical claims to land north of the Amur.

From the late 1960s until the late '80s, the Amur River was an armed
confrontation line after an ideological falling out between the Communist
leaderships in Moscow and Beijing. While the United States was preoccupied
with Vietnam, China and Russia almost entered into a full-scale war against
each other.

Chairman Mao Tse-tung said Russia had imposed unfair borders on China, and
he was once quoted as saying that the Russian cities of Vladivostok and
Khabarovsk by rights belonged to China.

Until 1989, tensions were so high that Russia closed its riverside city of
Blagoveshchensk. Foreigners were forbidden, and barbed wire lined the
riverbank. Today, on the Russian side at least, the only vestiges are heavy
concrete bunkers with gun slits facing China. They're filled with trash and
are a curiosity to the Chinese riverboats that swing close to shore so that
tourists can get a snapshot. Every day from June to September, a ferry
plies the river between Blagoveshchensk and the Chinese city on the other
bank, Heihe, laden with traders and goods. From November to March, an ice
road on the frozen Amur takes over.

City Is Being Drawn Into Chinese Orbit

It was a small scene, but perhaps emblematic of what is happening in
Blagoveshchensk. At this city's central market, a Russian teenager crouched
with a bowl of noodles in one hand, dexterously feeding himself a quick
lunch with a pair of chopsticks.

In subtle ways, this city of 200,000 people is being drawn into China's
orbit. Every morning, its people put on cheap clothes bought from China.
Its restaurants, almost without exception, serve Chinese food. The fruit
and vegetables come from China, and increasingly, Chinese people are
building houses and farming the surrounding land. The only construction in
evidence in the town is the work of a private Chinese firm, Huafu, creating
apartments notably more stylish than the concrete boxes thrown up in Soviet
times.

With rare exceptions, Chinese are barred from settling in Russia, but there
is an unrestricted right to visit for 30 days, and some Chinese are able to
skirt these rules by marrying Russians or getting special dispensations
from bureaucrats. Officially, there are only about 6,000 Chinese in the
city, but police sources and residents said the real figure is at least
three or four times higher.

Although their numbers are small, the pull of the Chinese is irresistible.
Moscow is six time zones and 5,500 miles away, and there is no decent road
from here to there. Harbin, a northern Chinese city nearly as big as
Moscow, is just a few hundred miles away on the Russian-built
Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Russians settled permanently in the Amur region in the mid-1850s after
Russia obtained the north bank of the Amur in a treaty with the Chinese
emperor. At the time, China said the grant was temporary.

Roles Reversed for Menial Labor

Early Russian settlers used the Chinese and Koreans whom they found living
in the Amur region for cheap labor. Now the roles are reversed. As often as
not, Russians are hired by Chinese for menial work.

"Look at me--I am a Russian coolie," Irina Nagibina cried out as she hefted
a sack filled with merchandise onto her back at a workers dormitory. The
building has been taken over by Chinese traders, who share rooms in the
facility and transform some into shops packed floor to ceiling with jeans,
raincoats, T-shirts and other goods.

Because it's backbreaking work, and because Russians are more effective at
getting cargo through Russian customs than the Chinese, the traders have
hired hundreds of Blagoveshchensk residents to carry goods from China into
Russia.

Called "bricks" because of the brick-shaped heavy plastic duffel bags they
use, the Russians earn 250 to 400 rubles a trip (about $8 to $13) and make
15 to 20 trips a month. They pick up their merchandise in Heihe and deliver
it to the Chinese vendors in the central market in Blagoveshchensk, which
draws shoppers and resellers from all over Siberia.

Rather than being grateful, many "bricks" are ashamed of what they do. They
complain that the employers treat them with contempt, like beasts, at times
even slapping or kicking them when they're in China.

"I have an education in trade. . . . I taught at a college. And now I have
been doing this work for five years," said Lyubov Loginova, interviewed
after dropping off her goods and arranging for her next trip.

Worker Feels 'Hatred for the Chinese'

On the loading dock of Blagoveshchensk's wholesale produce market, a
squadron of Russian women stoops over carrots and potatoes dumped on the
concrete. Their job is to sort the vegetables, trimming off bruised spots
and throwing out those too rotten to be sold.

"I feel hatred for the Chinese all the time," said Tamara Smirnova, 50, a
former accountant for a collective farm who earns 30 rubles (about $1) for
an eight-hour day, looking over at her scowling Chinese boss. "They are
shouting at us, shouting that we work badly, and we should work more and
more and more. . . ."

"All the time in our history we were trying to get rid of them. . . . And
now they are our masters. . . . What's more, there will be more and more of
them."

When Blagoveshchensk residents rant about the border, discussion quickly
comes around to the topic of prostitution. This town is awash in hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of garishly dressed Russian girls and women drawn from
great distances to make money off Chinese visitors.

A translator from China, calling himself Misha, agreed to talk about his
"tour guide" business, which often boils down to procuring prostitutes for
his Chinese clients.

This night, Misha was escorting three wealthy Chinese businessmen. He
presided over the negotiations after a night clerk in one of
Blagoveshchensk's best hotels ushered in a series of call girls.

At first, 10 arrived. Then five more, then three others, all summoned by
telephone from sex agencies. Most had bleached hair and were a head taller
than their middle-aged patrons. After looking at all 18, the businessmen
selected three and took them into the hotel's sauna.

After they left, Misha talked about how much he liked Russia. "If I had a
chance, I'd buy land here and build a house . . . for my grandchildren, at
least," he said.

"The Chinese are here to stay," he continued. "Russians need us. Someone
must grow vegetables for them, someone must sell them clothes and things,
someone must build them houses. Russians have to admit they can't do
without us. They don't know what to do with their land. We can all live
here together and profit from each other."

A century ago, when Russia was imperious and China was humiliated by
European powers after the Boxer Rebellion, Amur's Cossacks decided to rid
the Russian side of the Amur of all Chinese. They herded together men,
women and children and ordered them at bayonet point to swim across the
smoky black water toward China--forced them, in fact, to their deaths in
the cold, fast current. Many refused to swim and were slaughtered.

It is believed that 5,000 Chinese were killed from July 4 to July 10, 1900.
Today the site of the massacre near Blagoveshchensk isn't marked.

Architecturally, the town hasn't changed dramatically since then. It is
still a low-rise place with wide streets, early 20th century brick
buildings, a czarist-era garrison and streets lined with old log houses,
painted in dark blue and green.

What has changed is the Chinese community opposite. Only 20 years ago,
Heihe was a village. But with China's boom and a government directive to
develop Heihe as a trade zone with Russia, it has become a shining city,
with skyscrapers and a five-star hotel topped by a revolving restaurant.
Its embankment has a promenade freshly paved in bright white stone.

To many Russians in Blagoveshchensk, it's as if the Chinese built it to
show up their town, using the profits they earned in Russia.

Alexander Filonenko, 59, the editor at the town's newspaper, Amurskaya
Pravda, calls the growing Chinese presence a "dark concern." The Chinese
rule the Russian city's open-air markets, he said, and they also are
believed to trade in drugs and operate protection rackets. Some have begun
to employ middlemen to buy real estate. Residents are alarmed, he said,
that many seem of military age, provoking rumors that they are some sort of
infiltrators rather than simple traders.

And instead of being humble, he said, "these guests behave very often as if
they own the place."

Russian customers of the Chinese expressed some of the same feelings at the
city's main market.

"We already see some signs written in Chinese in the polyclinic, in the
buses, in shops--like they are invading," said Klavdiya Tsvetkova, 60.
"They are building houses, and we are afraid they're building them for
themselves."

Some Find Discomfort Amid Prosperity

In fact, some Chinese merchants at the market said they consider the Amur
region historically Chinese. "Of course this land is ours," said one.

But the dominant strain of their conversation was that they would much
prefer to be back in China and that they have come only out of economic need.

"They just don't understand us," businessman Meng Qingsai, 45, said of the
Russians. "I would do business in China and not live here 200 days a year
without my wife . . . but the prospects are better here--there is less
competition."

Fears about China run deep in Russian culture. So it came as a shock to her
colleagues and members of parliament recently when respected geographer
Zhanna Zainonchkovskaya issued a study suggesting throwing open Russia to
mass immigration from China and other Asian nations. Zainonchkovskaya, a
scholar at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Moscow, argues that Russia's population of 145 million will
shrink to an estimated 126 million by 2015 if current trends continue.
Unless the sparsely peopled country finds willing hands to work in its
factories and farms, it faces decline, she believes.

Russia should aim for 10 million to 20 million Chinese by 2050, either as
guest workers or immigrants, she said, predicting Russia would succeed
America as the world's main absorber of immigrants.

Moscow's Presence Could Dwindle

If Russia doesn't address its need for immigrants, she warned, in the long
run Moscow's presence in the Far East may dwindle to the point that
residents may wish to break away or even align with China. "There is a
hypothetical danger that we could lose Siberia--because of resources there
that the whole world needs," she said.

Some in Blagoveshchensk are beginning to recognize the benefits the Chinese
bring to the region.

For the second year in a row, Alexander Kuksenko, a 33-year-old farmer, has
hired workers and an agronomist from China to help him cultivate his 25
hectares (about 62 acres).

On the day he was visited by a Western correspondent, Russians and Chinese
were working side by side, planting watermelons. In an assembly-line
operation, they were putting in seedlings, rolling out plastic sheeting
over them, staking the plastic down and cutting holes for the leaves to
grow through. It is a method Kuksenko learned from the Chinese that allows
him to plant earlier in the season and get more profits.

Kuksenko effusively praised the employees from China for their skill and
devotion to any task at hand--traits he found lacking in many of his own
compatriots. His advice to his fellow Russians?

"Work together with the Chinese, and you won't have any problems."

Daniszewski was recently on assignment in Blagoveshchensk.

******

#10
Zhirinovsky Confirms Jewish Roots
July 18, 2001
By ANNA DOLGOV

MOSCOW (AP) - He is Russia's best-known ultranationalist, a flamboyant
politician who praised Adolf Hitler and accused Jews of provoking the
Holocaust - all the while staunchly denying his own Jewish roots.

Now Vladimir Zhirinovsky has confirmed that his father was Jewish, and says
many of his relatives perished in the Holocaust.

``My father was a Jew, a Polish Jew,'' the 56-year-old Zhirinovsky wrote in
his book published this week. ``His name was Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein.''

Public records found by a reporter in 1994 showed that Zhirinovsky was
given the name Eidelshtein at birth, but changed it when he was 18.

But the nationalist member of parliament had long insisted the documents
were fake and said the find had ``nothing to do with reality.''

``Only Russian, all (my) family is Russian,'' he told The Associated Press
in 1994.

His behavior suggested that if he were Jewish, he was doing his best to
forget his origins. Zhirinovsky has accused Jews of bringing Russia to
ruin, taking Russian women abroad for prostitution, and selling healthy
Russian children and transplant organs to the West.

This spring, he refused to honor a moment of silence for the Nazis' Jewish
victims, saying Russia's lower house of parliament should not stand in
their memory when there were millions of other Nazi victims including
Russians.

After a campaign built on firebrand nationalism, Zhirinovsky's party won
nearly a quarter of the national vote in a 1993 parliamentary election,
prompting tens of thousands of Russian Jews to apply for foreign visas in
case they would have to flee the country, Jewish activists have said.

But Zhirinovsky's popularity has faded in recent years, and his latest
acknowledgment could be an attention-grabbing device, typical of the
politician known for his sensational statements, fiery speeches and
maverick ways.

The chief rabbi of Russia's Federation of Jewish Communities, Berl Lazar,
also suggested that Zhirinovsky could be following a recent trend among
Russia's Jews to advertise their roots, after decades of choosing to hide
them amid official discrimination and popular harassment.

Acknowledging one's Jewish origins has become a kind of fashion in Russia,
Lazar said - a fashion that appears to have been advanced by President
Vladimir Putin's demonstration of support for Jewish communities and his
attendance of Jewish events.

``People today are proud to come out and say: 'Yes, I am Jewish,''' Lazar
said in a telephone interview. ``We see it throughout the country.
Thousands and thousands of people who knew they were Jewish and were hiding
it ... are opening up their closets.''

Yet, Zhirinovsky's acknowledgment of his origin is halfhearted at best. In
the book, titled ``Ivan, Close Your Soul,'' Zhirinovsky repeatedly states
he considers himself an ethnic Russian, and is proud of that.

He also makes no attempt to apologize for his anti-Semitic harangues, and
dwells on his pet themes of Jewish domination of the world's politics and
finance.

``Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land and fall
in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood
that my father left in my mother's body?'' he writes.

Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism, both during the czarist and
Soviet eras, and there have been incidents of vandalism and isolated
violence aimed at Jews in recent years.

But polls indicate that hostility toward Jews has ebbed as Russian
nationalists have found other targets for their anger - primarily Chechens
and other often dark-skinned natives of the Caucasus Mountains region.

******

#11
New York Times
July 19, 2001
[for personal use only]
Pushing Agenda for ABM's, Bush Prepares to Meet Putin
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

LONDON, July 18 — As President Bush prepares for meetings this weekend with
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other world leaders, the White
House has stressed its desire to work out a new understanding with Moscow
to replace the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.

But the Bush administration has already decided that it will not accept a
new agreement that limits the development of antimissile defenses.

"We don't want to have formal restrictions on development, testing and
deployment," a senior administration official said today.

Mr. Bush's approach represents a radical break with the approach that has
regulated military competition between Moscow and Washington for three
decades — detailed, legally binding treaties that spelled out carefully
negotiated limits and verification measures.

Administration officials say their stance reflects the end of the cold war
and a desire to give the Pentagon maximum flexibility in devising defenses
against potential missile threats from aspiring third world powers like
Iran or North Korea.

But that approach is, at best, a hard sell with the Russians. In Moscow,
Mr. Putin today tempered his criticism of Washington's plans for a limited
defense but gave no hint that he was prepared to abandon the ABM treaty.

If Moscow fails to go along with the administration's approach, that is
quite likely to cause serious consternation in Europe. Most European
governments say if the 1972 treaty is to be abandoned it should be
succeeded by a legally binding accord that regulates the development of
strategic systems and makes the military balance more predictable.

For months, Mr. Bush, who arrived this evening in London, has been saying
that he wants to replace the the treaty with a new strategic framework.
Although many elements of the framework are still vague, one fact is clear,
that the Pentagon has been given a free hand and a hefty budget to develop
an antimissile defense.

The Pentagon has proposed an ambitious program to conduct antimissile tests
in space, at sea, on aircraft and on land. Senior administration officials
say that in devising a testing plan they did not take into account whether
they had complied with the ABM treaty. The goal, they said, is to develop
and deploy the systems as quickly as possible.

"We want to deploy a limited defense as soon as possible to deal with new
threats," a senior administration official said. "And the capability we
will have will in no way threaten the Russian offensive deterrent."

To reassure Russia that a missile shield would not threaten its nuclear
deterrent, the administration is proposing to keep Moscow informed about
the pace and scope of its program. It is talking about making deep cuts in
the United States strategic nuclear force, though the only reductions it
has so far announced are the retirement of 50 MX missiles and two Trident
submarines.

Washington has offered to help fill gaps in Russia's network of early
warning radars and other forms of cooperation, including joint production
of nuclear reactors. What Washington is not prepared to do is negotiate a
detailed arms control treaty to take the place of the ABM accord.

"The clear preference is not to have a formal cold-war style set of
negotiations that produces a 300- page document that lays out what can be
done and what cannot be done by two adversaries," a senior official said.
"That is not the sort of relationship we want to have with Russia."

Critics said the administration's proposal to inform the Russians about the
development of missile systems but not to subject the United States to
formal limits failed to provide Moscow with sufficient assurance to believe
that a limited American shield would stay limited. That, the critics said,
will pressure Moscow to deploy multiwarhead missiles and take other steps
to preserve its offensive striking power.

"Treaties that place limits on the testing and deployment of defensive
systems provide predictability to all sides about the future strategic
environment," said Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. "And it is that predictability that will enable Russia to
avoid worst case assumptions and to continue to reduce its nuclear arsenal
significantly. It is wrong to equate arms control treaties with the cold
war. Treaties are an instrument for reducing tensions among states in a
cold war and for avoiding a return to the cold war."

The 1972 treaty limits testing of antimissile technology. But it does not
preclude all development or deployment. The Russians have, in fact,
deployed 100 interceptors near Moscow, as the pact permits.

As political pressure grew in the Clinton administration to pursue an
antimissile shield, officials developed plans for a limited system. Their
approach was to test elements of the program and, if successful, deploy 100
interceptors in Alaska.

To address Moscow's worries, the Clinton administration proposed to amend,
not jettison, the ABM accord. Many of the prohibitions, including the ban
on the testing and deployment of space-based and sea-based defenses, would
have been retained.

From the start, however, the Bush administration has been far more radical.
It committed itself to deploying an antimissile shield before it devised a
test program.

The goal is a multitiered program that can intercept missiles right after
launching, destroy warheads in space and knock out any surviving warheads
as they re-enter the atmosphere. In an echo of Ronald Reagan's Strategic
Defense Initiative, or Star Wars plan, the Pentagon even plans to test a
space-based laser and space-based interceptors that would destroy missiles
in their boost phase, three to five minutes after launching.

The first elements of the program, the interceptors in Alaska, could be
deployed as early as 2006. The Pentagon even has a plan to rush the
ground-based interceptors into the field by 2004 should a crisis arise. The
ultimate goal is to blunt an attack by dozens of missiles, not hundreds.
But the precise design of the system is still undetermined.

The Pentagon's basic approach has been to finance an array of options, at a
cost of $8 billion a year, and see which systems work. Lt. Gen. Ronald T.
Kadish of the Air Force, who oversees the missile defense program, told
Congress last week that he could not say what the system would look like in
5, 10 or 15 years.

But the White House has no interest in detailed talks about permissible
testing and deployments. "This is not about lining in, lining out the ABM
treaty to try to get a little bit of flexibility to do this test or that
test," Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said last
week.

"There's a good reason not to get into 15-year negotiations, which is what
it has taken to create arms control treaties," Ms. Rice added. "I'm saying
it's not necessary."

Although Washington does not want another arms negotiation, it does want
Russia's blessing to proceed with its program. That is not only important
for building new ties with Moscow, but it is also important to soothe
European anxieties and to maintain Congressional support for
multibillion-dollar effort.

Time is running out. The State Department sent a cable to its diplomats
this month advising them that the testing program would "come into conflict
with the ABM treaty in months, not years."

If it does not obtain Russia's approval to abandon the ABM treaty,
Washington can withdraw on six months' notice. The administration is hoping
that the withdrawal threat will pressure the Russians to come to an
accommodation with Washington. Pulling out of the accord, however, is a
double-edged sword and would have consequences for the Bush administration
that could exceed the uproar in Europe over the White House opposition to
the Kyoto environment accord.

"If the ABM treaty is changed," a German official said, "it should be a
negotiated solution between the United States and the Russians. Our concern
is that there is a framework that has served us well and that we should
only do away with the old framework if we have a better one."

*******

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