October 7, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5480

Johnson's Russia List
#5480
7 October 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Suspicions of missile blunder in Russia air crash.
2. New York Times editorial: From Russia, With Realism.
3. Washington Post: Jim Hoagland, Two Who Seized The Moment.
4. Financial Times (UK): Robert Cottrell and Michael Peel, A stealth fighter: MAN IN THE NEWS VLADIMIR PUTIN: Russia's president has played a clever hand since the crisis broke.
5. The Observer (UK): Kevin O'Flynn, Microsoft maverick's cafe brings new hope to Russian orphans. Bill Gates's ex-troubleshooter helps keep children off highway to crime.
6. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, Putin chooses U.S. over political elite. The president and the people have taken a stand for human decency.
7. The Russsia Journal: Dmitry Pinsker, New red wave starts rolling.
8. BBC Monitoring: Russian NTV again hints at commissioner of famous journalist's murder. (Listyev)
9. Wall Street Journal Europe: Benjamin Smith, U.S., Russia Allegiance in War on Terror May Stall Baltic States' Entry Into NATO.
10. Reuters: Fischer-Russia mustn't abuse Chechnya human rights.
11. The Independent (UK): Fergal Keane, There is no such thing as a friendly tyrant. `No amount of Russian co-operation will justify a guilty silence over Chechnya'
12. The Guardian (UK): Jonathan Steele, Our Afghan warlords: Arming the Taliban's opponents will only deepen the agony of a ruined nation.]

******

#1
Suspicions of missile blunder in Russia air crash
By Rosalind Russell

SOCHI, Russia, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Ships trawled Black Sea waters on Sunday
searching for evidence of what downed a Russian airliner, as suspicions grew
that a misfired Ukrainian rocket hit the plane killing up to 78 people.

A scientific research vessel equipped to explore to depths of over 1,000
metres (3,300 ft) joined fishing boats battling stormy seas to haul debris
and bodies from the water.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov asked Ukraine on Saturday for
information on a specific missile fired in military exercises on Thursday
when the Sibir airline TU-154, en route to Siberia from Israel, exploded and
crashed into the sea.

Investigators in Russia's Black Sea port of Sochi said they had found objects
among the charred and fuel-soaked debris which could not have come from the
plane itself.

Israeli military experts with specialist equipment arrived in Sochi early on
Sunday to assist the salvage operation and help identify the victims, many of
whom were Israeli citizens.

"Our aim is to help those who need our help," said Lieutenant-Colonel Shimon
Dahan, deputy head of the Israeli team. "The delegation consists above all of
police who specialise in the identification of bodies."

A small group of distraught relatives were taken to the morgue in a
thunderstorm on Sunday for the grim task of trying to identify bodies -- some
burnt beyond recognition.

Military rabbis accompanied the Israeli delegation to ensure that bodies were
treated according to correct Jewish procedure.

Just 15 bodies and part of another body have been fished from the water so
far, and eight of them identified by family members, officials said.

A special flight from Tel Aviv will bring 21 more relatives to Sochi later on
Sunday and those who wish will be taken by ship to the crash site on Monday
if weather conditions allow.

PROOF COULD SOUR RELATIONS

Proof that a missile downed the plane could sour recently improving relations
between Ukraine and its former Soviet master Russia. Ivanov said on Saturday
Russian President Vladimir Putin was unhappy with the information Ukraine had
provided so far.

"The president was not satisfied with the material, it is of an
insufficiently complete nature," Ivanov said.

Ukrainian forces were carrying out live-missile firing exercises on the
Crimean Black Sea peninsula on Thursday when the airliner exploded and
crashed around 200 km (125 miles) away.

Ukraine's military denied its forces had shot down the airliner, bound for
Novosibirsk in Siberia from Tel Aviv, saying the plane had been out of range
of the exercises.

But a day later, Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh appeared to retreat
from those denials, saying the missile theory "had a right to exist."

Putin spoke by telephone to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who once
managed the Soviet Union's biggest missile factory, and the leaders agreed to
cooperate in the probe.

"The truth is the most important thing to us and we are ready to work with
the whole world in order to find it," Kuchma was quoted as saying during a
visit to Poland on Saturday.

The crash initially raised fears of sabotage, but Washington quickly said a
U.S. spy satellite detected the rocket plume of a missile close to the crash
area and discounted terrorism. Russia has asked the Pentagon to make the
evidence available.

******

#2
New York Times
October 7, 2001
Editorial
From Russia, With Realism

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has been quick to align himself with
American diplomatic and even military initiatives in the aftermath of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For this, he deserves Washington's gratitude and
respect. But any substantive changes in American policies involving Russia
must still be evaluated on an issue-by-issue basis. In some areas, like arms
control and combatting terrorism, Washington's interests and Moscow's
generally coincide. In others, like the defense of human rights in Chechnya
and nuclear assistance to Iran, they do not.

Arguing that both countries face a common threat from radical Islamic
terrorism, Mr. Putin has taken dramatic steps that no recent Russian leader
would have contemplated. He agreed, for example, to share intelligence
information on Afghanistan, and he approved the idea of America's stationing
troops on the soil of Central Asia's former Soviet republics. In doing so, he
has challenged the views of many Russian military officers and of powerful
nationalist and Communist parliamentary blocs.

Mr. Putin clearly expects that his friendship will be rewarded down the road
with more forthcoming American policies on a range of issues from Chechnya to
missile defense to the future of NATO.

The Bush administration needs to be cautious about what kinds of concessions
it will make. Already, Washington appears to be deliberately, and wrongly,
downplaying the issue of Russian human rights violations in Chechnya. Moscow
has long claimed that Osama bin Laden and his allies have been training
Chechen independence fighters, and it portrays the Chechen fighting as
primarily a battle against radical Islamic terrorism. But the conflict
between Russians and Chechens goes back centuries, and the two Russian
military offensives there over the past decade have been accompanied by the
brutal and widespread abuse of innocent civilians. Washington should continue
to protest this inexcusable behavior.

There may be more room for mutual accommodation on missile defense. The
prominence of this issue has receded since Sept. 11. But the idea of
Washington's moving on its own to abandon the 1972 Antiballistic Missile
Treaty makes even less sense now than it did a month ago. The administration
should concentrate instead on a more modest plan to reach an agreement with
Russia that would permit limited missile defenses without unraveling valuable
arms control accords between the two countries.

Mr. Putin also wants to reconsider Russia's traditionally adversarial
relations with NATO, as he indicated on his visit to the alliance's
headquarters in Brussels last Wednesday. He suggested that Moscow may drop
its reflexive opposition to former Soviet republics, like the Baltic
countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, ever joining NATO. Those
countries' applications should be evaluated on their own merits.

But Mr. Putin stated that warmer Russian relations with NATO depended on
changes in the nature of the alliance that would make it more of a political
organization than a military pact. That will need to be carefully explored.
The importance of NATO's military dimension was demonstrated in Kosovo and
newly underscored when the alliance invoked its mutual defense clause in
response to last month's terror attacks on the United States.

Mr. Putin's strong support for America in the fight against terrorism has
opened the way to a warmer, more constructive relationship between Russia and
the United States. Much hard work will be needed, on both sides, to fulfill
that hopeful promise.

*******

#3
Washington Post
October 7, 2001
Two Who Seized The Moment
By Jim Hoagland

The vast wind machines that modern political leaders employ to create word
pictures of themselves in the usually otherwise occupied minds of their
citizens count for relatively little in times of true crisis. Existential
threats draw out and expose the true nature of leadership and of those who
practice it.

Abroad, two men stand out in quickly grasping the possibilities that rise
from the terror of Sept. 11 and the Bush administration's efforts to shape
the international environment for a U.S. response. In very different ways,
Britain's Tony Blair and Russia's Vladimir Putin see opportunities in this
crisis and reach for them.

Less than a month into a struggle that President Bush declares will last for
years, Blair and Putin have articulated separate visions of where the war on
terrorism can take the world. These visions are powered by self-interest and
national ambitions, not surprisingly. But both go beyond simple self-interest
to link today's actions to tomorrow's consequences and to the fate of their
nations.

Caution and haggling have emerged as the default position for many nations as
the initial waves of shock and sympathy subside. Saudis, Egyptians, Chinese
and others respond to Washington's stress on coalition-building by asking the
first question of politics-as-usual: What's in it for me? The American tab
for asking other nations to do the right thing threatens to be enormous, if
not unpayable, over the long haul.

But Blair and Putin see a moment in which power relationships in the world
can be changed in profound ways by ideas and new thinking as well as by
bargaining. They are willing to make down payments on the future and thus to
influence it.

Important distinctions need to be made between two leaders who act
independently. I have in the past praised Blair's determination to pursue a
new moral world order (especially during the Kosovo emergency) and questioned
Putin's commitment to democracy and his tolerance of Russian atrocities in
Chechnya. These filters remain and no doubt color my perceptions.

But the political behavior of Blair and Putin in recent days transcends and
alters established images. These relatively youthful men (Blair is 48; Putin
turns 49 today) do not run from dramatic change. They run to lead it in their
direction.

It is not possible in this space to do justice to the masterful, intensely
personal speech Blair gave last Tuesday to his Labor Party's annual
convention. He outlined why and how the campaigns to end terrorism and the
conditions that help sustain terrorism must be waged jointly. He made a
powerful case for supporting not just an American president but also
America's imperfect but dynamic society. And he traced the way in which
Britain could soon become an integral part of a new, transformed Europe.

"Tony Blair hopes that the world anti-terror campaign will make Europe mean
something. He wants Europe to matter to itself, to its citizens and to the
Americans," the Guardian's Hugo Young wrote of the speech. The other, fearful
side of that coin was put to me in Washington by Claude Imbert, founder and
publisher of Le Point magazine in Paris:

"I worry about Europe's response to this crisis. This is a moment for
conviction and optimism, such as I find in America now, not for the cynicism
and subtleties of diplomacy and politics as often practiced in Europe."

In Brussels on Wednesday, Putin made a skillful bid to enlarge the opening
for Russia in Europe's most important institutions and ambitions. He sought
to hitch Russia's wagon to the urgency of the anti-terrorism horse.

He outlined a program of cooperation with the European Union on Russian
membership in the World Trade Organization. Putin also advanced a promising
dialogue nurtured by NATO Secretary General George Robertson by imagining out
loud that NATO membership for the Baltic states and perhaps eventually for
Russia could contribute to stability in Europe. He did this after overruling
his military on cooperating extensively with Washington on Afghanistan.

Actions will count far more than words in the days to come. But history's
door is swinging on its hinges, as the humanistic agenda of Blair and the
skillful opportunism of Putin both demonstrate.

It has been said that Sept. 11 has already changed world politics and foreign
relations. That is a premature judgment. Blair and Putin both understand that
the direction of that change is not inevitable or easily foreseeable. It can
be channeled by imagination and effort. Influencing the dramatic change to
come is still an option for genuine leaders; halting that change is not.

*******

#4
Financial Times (UK)
6 October 2001
A stealth fighter: MAN IN THE NEWS VLADIMIR PUTIN:
Russia's president has played a clever hand since the crisis broke
By ROBERT COTTRELL and MICHAEL PEEL

Just a year ago, Vladimir Putin flew to New York to address fellow heads of
government at the United Nations' general assembly. He might have been the
recently elected president of Russia but his dull speech went down like a
damp squib.

It was only a month after the sinking of the Kursk, the nuclear submarine
that had been the pride of the Russian navy. On land, the Russian army was
getting bogged down in its bloody confrontation with secessionist rebels in
the republic of Chechnya. The best Mr Putin could manage in New York was
damage limitation.

Today, and against all the odds, this former Soviet KGB operative and deputy
mayor of the city of St Petersburg has managed to transform the situation.
Thanks to a combination of low-key competence and skilful exploitation of his
rare diplomatic opportunities, he has worked his way to a proper seat at the
international top table.

Last week he spent an hour on the telephone with President George W. Bush, in
which he promised his country's support for the US-led campaign against
terrorism. Against the advice of his generals, he agreed to let US forces use
Russian facilities in the former Soviet republics of central Asia. It was a
diplomatic coup to crown an impressive year in foreign policy.

A day later, he was received in the German Bundestag in Berlin with stormy
applause. He talked in fluent German - "the language of Goethe, Schiller and
Kant" - about the unity of European culture, the positive impact of European
integration and Russia's determination to be part of Europe. It was well
judged and extremely well received.

This week in Brussels he got an equally warm welcome from leaders of the
European Union, followed by one-to-one talks with Lord Robertson,
secretary-general of the Nato alliance. Instead of simply listening to stern
lectures about Chechnya, he spelt out the practical measures he was ready to
undertake for the anti-terrorist campaign.

"He really performed exceptionally well," says one senior EU official. "He
was clever enough not to place price tags outright on what he is able to
offer now. But he knows what the inter-national community needs from his
country more than ever. He knows Russia can make a difference but he did not
make any direct linkage to what he wants."

It is precisely because he is so understated - so boring, even - that he has
managed to recover a measure of Russia's lost influence, in spite of its
economic and military decline. "By eschewing rhetoric, by cultivation rather
than confrontation, he is slowly strengthening the international position of
a Russia which has lost almost all of its traditional instruments for
exercising power and influence," wrote Sir Roderick Braithwaite, former
British ambassador to Moscow, a month before the September 11 terrorist
attacks. Since then, Russia has realised it still possesses some of those
strategic instruments.

Yet all is certainly not straightforward for the Russian leader. He has a
domestic audience to consider. He must be acutely aware of the political
disaster that overtook his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw his
popularity sink at home as he became a hero abroad.

As a measure of the constraints on Mr Putin's foreign policy, consider the
scenes in Moscow while he was away in Brussels charming Nato and the EU. His
defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, was rolling out the red carpet for Ali
Shamkhani, defence minister of Iran, and signing a preliminary agreement
expected to yield arms sales bringing Russia about Dollars 300m (Pounds 200m)
a year.

Russia claims Iran is a force for stability in the Middle East. The US
classifies it as a state sponsor of terrorism and says the same about other
countries with which Russia has amiable relations, such as Iraq and North
Korea.

When the chances of rapprochement with the US seemed remote, Russia had
little incentive to heed US carping. Only three months ago it signed a
"treaty of peace and friendship" with China, which many saw as the germ of an
anti-US alliance.

Now the western option is unexpectedly open. Clearly, Mr Putin is not blind
to the merits of taking it - and ditching the old-fashioned, Soviet-tinged
foreign policy he was in danger of reviving. But to do that he must overcome
a conservative majority in the political and military establishment that has
grown up distrusting the west.

Alexei Arbatov, an influential Russian parliamentarian, estimates that only
about 10-15 per cent of politicians regard this as the time for "a real
change" in Russian foreign policy. One who does is Boris Nemtsov, leader of
the liberal Union of Right Forces. He says Russia now has a chance to join
hands with the west - comparable with the chances it fumbled when it spurned
the Marshall plan and when the Berlin Wall came down.

But Mr Nemtsov is the exception. There is far greater conservatism in other
quarters. The Communist party, by far the biggest political party in Russia,
remains fiercely anti-western in its instincts and rhetoric. So are many in
the military.

For Russia, foreign policy is a matter of money as well as ideology. Arms and
nuclear reactors are among the few manufactured goods it can export
competitively and the developing world - including "rogue states" - are its
natural market. Iraq has promised Russian firms investment contracts worth
Dollars 40bn if United Nations sanctions are lifted.

Mr Putin himself thinks a lot about money. He knows a strong Russia can be
built only on a strong economy. He will want any new foreign policy to bring
material as well as moral gains. He will want foreign investment, trade, aid
and perhaps a debt write-off if the economic situation deteriorates.

He will also want the west to mute its criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya,
even to support it as another front against "terrorism".

Criticism of the Chechen war is almost the only subject which can cause Mr
Putin to lose his composure.

It is also turning into a potential liability even at home. A year ago 24 per
cent of Russians named policy towards Chechnya as one of the things they
admired most about Mr Putin. Early this year, that figure had fallen to 7 per
cent. But Mr Putin remains highly popular with most Russians. A poll taken
last week gave him a 73 per cent approval rating. No potential rival for the
presidency got more than 20 per cent.

Such figures suggest that if Mr Putin does want to change Russian foreign
policy, and so long as doing so brings no economic hardship, he can afford
the risk politically. The problem will be finding generals, ministers and
diplomats willing and able to carry out the new policy.

******

#5
The Observer (UK)
7 October 2001
Microsoft maverick's cafe brings new hope to Russian orphans
Bill Gates's ex-troubleshooter helps keep children off highway to crime
Kevin O'Flynn, Moscow

Five years ago David Tagliani was on call night and day in Seattle as
Microsoft's leading troubleshooter. He was also a physical and emotional
wreck.

Now he is the happy owner of a four-computer internet cafe that helps orphans
in the small provincial Russian town of Uglich.

As the senior manager of worldwide operations at Microsoft, Tagliani was the
man the company turned to when things went wrong. If there was a problem in
Bolivia it was Tagliani, 43, a former firefighter, who was woken up, or sent
a demanding email from Bill Gates, and told to fix it.

But the stress and the 48-hour days helped end his marriage, and push his
family away until he finally realised that his whole life had become
'Microsoft'.

'Is there more to life than this?' thought Tagliani, and cashing in his
million-dollar stock options he set off round the world for the next two
years.

Travelling in Russia had the biggest impression on him. Six months after his
return to the United States, after a period teaching computer skills with
inner-city Hispanic kids, he realised he could do the same in Russia and
upped and left.

His mother had told him of an orphanage she had visited in Uglich, 125 miles
north of Moscow, so he headed there with a couple of computers and some
Microsoft software that he had picked up cheap. 'I just packed, got on
Aeroflot, went to the orphanage and knocked on the door,' said Tagliani.

Tagliani spent the summer of 1998 working with the orphans, setting up a
computer lab in the rundown orphanage and picking berries and mushrooms in
the nearby forests with them.

He returned to the United States, but the children in the orphanage kept on
calling him back. He had learnt that many of them awaited an uncertain fate.
Few of the vastly underfunded Russian orphanages prepare their charges for
going into the outside world and every year many of the thousands of children
who leave homes kill themselves, become drug abusers or fall into a life of
crime.

'Within a year some of the kids are dead and 30 per cent go into crime,' said
Tagliani. 'For the boys that means organised crime, for girls it means
prostitution.'

In Uglich, a small town that was known for making watches in Soviet times,
can offer little but unemployment to the children.

When Tagliani told one child he should try to do well at school, the child
responded: 'I'm going to be living in this dinky town for the rest of my life
milking cows. What do I need to learn maths for, what do I need to learn
English for? Cows don't speak English.'

After taking an intensive course in Russian in the US, Tagliani returned to
Uglich and invested $50,000 to set up the small town's first internet cafe
next door to the orphanage.

As well as being a cafe, it works as a skills training centre for orphans
whether they want to learn computer skills, accountancy or how to cook pizzas
for the cafe.

So far the cafe has done well. As well as being dubbed the coolest place in
Uglich by one local paper, a number of other orphanages have asked him to set
up a similar operation with their homes.

Until last year, none of the children had stayed on in school past the age of
15 in the previous 20 years. Now, two of the children who worked in the cafe
have begun studying in a school for bookkeeping.

'No one has helped us better than him,' said the director of the Children's
Home, Tatyana Nazareva.

'He really loves the kids and they really love him,' said Nazareva, who said
that Tagliani had also paid for one of the children to have an operation to
fix her twisted spine - an operation which, Nazareva says, has changed the
girl's life.

The children are paid - 150-200 roubles (£3-4) a month - for working in the
cafe, but have to maintain good marks in school and show what they spend the
money on. 'Hopefully the statistics will be better for my kids,' Tagliani
said.

Not all the children have managed to avoid trouble, however. One girl is now
in prison after being convicted of murder.

Tagliani, though, has bigger hopes for those who go to work in the cafe. Last
year he invested in a large internet cafe in the centre of Moscow where he
hopes children from the orphanage can eventually work.

'Uglich is a small town,' said Tagliani. 'The need for HTML programmers or
web designers is pretty limited.'

******

#6
The Russia Journal
October 5-11, 2001
Putin chooses U.S. over political elite
The president and the people have taken a stand for human decency
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY

For millions of people, two women became the TV embodiment of the tragedy
on Sept. 11.

We heard the voice of one of them. Faced with an agonizing death, she
called her loved ones to say goodbye. I will never forget that voice,
filled with love and human dignity. But the world also remembered the face
of another woman as she danced in celebration, having learned the dreadful
fate that befell the American woman and thousands of her compatriots. The
creature even stuck out her little tongue in a lascivious gesture of
ecstasy as she danced her jubilant jig.

Also working hard with their tongues during these days were the LDPR
leaders – well-fed by someone’s hand, just like the dancing woman.
Spluttering hatred and triumphant joy at others’ sorrows, they waltzed
their way through TV and radio studios and into the State Duma.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Alexei Mitrofanov are the walking collective
subconscious mind of the Russian "political elite." They brazenly say what
the mainstream elite would like to say but can’t because it feels just a
little embarrassed.

At a time when the geopolitical situation has taken a sudden sharp turn and
put Russia before a strategic choice that will define the country’s destiny
for decades to come, the Russian political elite has proven to be not up to
the challenge. Even in publications and speeches that let glimpse some
reasonable assessments and conclusions, anti-American invective and
sentiment still dominated.

The elite was still waving its fists in the Cold War it lost back in the
now-very-distant 20th century. Our generals, brought up to fight World War
III, see the U.S. operations in Afghanistan exclusively in the context of
NATO creeping closer to Russia’s southern borders. And this is an incurable
state of mind.

In reality, the choice is clear. Russia cannot be on the side of those who
dance. These "murderous Huns" will someday dance and "foul the air with
roasting flesh" on the ruins of Russia.

Unlike the elite, President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people quickly
made their choice by following Andrei Sakharov’s principle that in a
complex political situation the most strategically correct, and at the same
time pragmatic, choice is the choice based on morals.

Russians took flowers to the American embassy and consulates and lit
candles in memory of the victims. Putin broke with his somewhat cold image
a few hours after the tragedy and reacted with unexpected emotion and
concern, saying "Americans – we are with you."

Putin was even more emotional and significant the next day in Yerevan when
he compared the organizers of the terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington with the Nazis. This comparison had clear echoes with the
anti-Nazi coalition formed by the Soviet Union, the United States and Great
Britain during World War II.

But a couple of days later, as the world was swept up in political crisis,
Putin worked on documents at his dacha in Sochi only to find that his
entourage was beginning to put some corrections into his declared position.
In their speeches and statements, Putin’s high political priests, political
analysts and commentators began to dilute his position and gradually turn
it into its opposite. It’s enough to recall the self-satisfied statements
of "civilian" Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, eternally admiring his own
imaginary importance.

The United States drew more accusations, schadenfreude and indignation than
did the terrorists who killed thousands of Americans and people of other
nationalities, including more than 70 Russians, whom none of the
politicians even mentioned.

This made it all the more significant when Putin reiterated his initial
position on Sept. 24. To make his words heard and make clear Russia’s
choice in favor of close cooperation with the anti-terrorist coalition,
Putin had to overcome the resistance of a large and influential part of his
own entourage and the Russian political elite.

As for whether they will accept their defeat and won’t try to break with
the choice made by the president and the people – we will find out soon.

******

#7
The Russsia Journal
October 5-11, 2001
New red wave starts rolling
By DMITRY PINSKER

Whether out of a sense of helplessness or incompetence, presidential
analysts and spin-doctors always talk of Communist successes in the regions
with concern. The most the Kremlin-dwellers have done so far though is to
identify the problem and give it an eloquent name – the "new red wave."

What is happening with the Communists is indeed surprising. The Kremlin
hasn’t succeeded in toppling them in their traditional heartlands of
Central Russia and the North Caucasus. Critics may cite the case of
Ulyanovsk, but this doesn’t count: Communist Yury Goryachev, who tried
building developed socialism in a single region, was replaced by a "Chechen
war hero" General Vladimir Shamanov, who now and then attempts to introduce
something reminiscent of War Communism.

As if this wasn’t enough, the Kremlin has let the Communists expand their
influence in the regions. Traditionally liberal Nizhny Novgorod elected
Communist Gennady Khodyrev as governor. Irkutsk and Rostov-on-Don narrowly
avoided a similar fate only because the acting governors used the full
might of the administrative resources to stop it. In Rostov, the Communist
candidate was struck from the list just a few days before voting. In
Irkutsk, the incumbent governor snatched a victory from his Communist rival
by an extremely slim margin, which probably only appeared in the final
hours of vote counting.

And these places are not provincial backwaters of the likes of Tula or
Ivanovo. These are major intellectual and industrial cities, which by
Russian standards are performing quite well. Traditionally, voters in these
regions have supported if not the right-wing parties, then at least the
"party of power."

The Communist successes are all the more glaring given the Kremlin team’s
string of victories against the Communists at the federal level. The
Communists have lost much of their influence over key decision-making
processes in the last six months. The fights in the Duma over the Land Code
last summer and the unauthorized demonstrations in Moscow during debates on
the Land and Labor Codes bear this out. At that time, the Kremlin’s
reaction, though not public, was rapid and straight to the point – either
the Communists got back into line, or they faced losing their Duma
committee chairmanships.

This was a serious threat. Holding the chair of a Duma committee is
valuable not just as a source of administrative influence and a chance to
get party officials budget-funded jobs, but also as a source of party
funding – as payment for lobbying services.

The autumn Duma session has so far seen the Communists keeping a much lower
profile – proof of their increasing weakness as a political force. The Duma
had no problems passing the Land Code, and two weeks later even voted on it
again, just to dismiss any possible accusations of procedural violations.
The 2002 draft budget also passed its first reading without any particular
problems.

But despite the fact that the Duma now has an unquestionably loyal
presidential majority, ready to pass whatever laws the president wishes,
the Kremlin is still holding off with key laws that have always caused
controversy among the left-wingers – most notably the trade in agricultural
land. The new Land Code doesn’t apply to agricultural land.

Possible explanations for this cautiousness in the Kremlin are that the
left still has a certain influence on the government and Kremlin apparatus,
which is responsible for drawing up key documents, and the traditional fear
of provoking an outright conflict with a still-powerful opposition party.

The results of the latest round of regional elections are what makes it
possible to say the Communists still retain some power. And the
National-Patriotic Union’s assembly last weekend showed that the left is
full of fighting spirit and able to make a sudden change of course when
necessary.

Several times during his speech, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov used the
expression "nationwide discussion" when talking about this or that cause
dear to the left’s heart. Zyuganov said it was imperative to work more
actively in the regions with ordinary people.

"The time has come to identify the causes for people’s passivity and to
more accurately predict forthcoming events," said Communist Party ideologue
Ivan Melnikov. "This means we have to figure out how to turn passive
protest into action."

To strengthen their positions outside the Duma, which had been the left’s
main playing field, the Communists don’t even necessarily have to resort to
"action" or enter into a head-on collision with Putin personally. The
average voter isn’t highly politicized, doesn’t follow Moscow political
intrigue very closely, and doesn’t see a great difference between Putin and
the Communists.

This kind of voter goes more by symbols and words. Putin has expressed
respect for the left in words and has spoken warmly of the Communist Party.
And he has also backed his words up with deeds, chief among them being the
decision to return the Soviet national anthem, something the left couldn’t
have dreamed of under Boris Yeltsin.

The paradox of this situation is that the Communists could follow the
strategy of stubbornly drumming into people’s heads the banal old idea of
the good tsar – in this case Putin – who is really "our man," and the evil
Boyars, the German Grefs and Anatoly Chubaises, who feed the tsar all sorts
of liberal-bourgeois lies.

If the Communists succeed in cementing this image in voters’ minds, it will
be that much harder to stop the new red wave from rolling further.

*******

#8
BBC Monitoring
Russian NTV again hints at commissioner of famous journalist's murder

Russian NTV's "Top Secret" series at 1855 gmt 4 October 2001 showed a
55-minute programme investigating the murder of Russian television
personality Vladislav Listyev on 1 March 1995. The film directors, Andrey
Kalitin and Rustem Davydov, say it was the first high-profile contract
killing that really shook Russia and that since then, the investigators have
been changed more than once. They added that over 10 people have confessed to
killing the journalist for various reasons such as protecting their families
against threats of blackmail but that none of these confession shave stood up
to scrutiny.

The film shows interviews with the then Russian Prosecutor-General Yuriy
Skuratov, Russian President Boris Yeltsin's bodyguard at the time Aleksandr
Korzhakov, TV producer Irina Lesnevskaya, lawyer Andrey Makarov and Top
Secret journalist Larisa Kislinskaya. It also shows interviews with acting
Prosecutor General Oleg Gaydanov and the heads of investigation group at
different times, Boris Uvarov and Petr Griboy.

The film does not name the actual person who commissioned the murder but
hints that only two people could have profited from it, namely media tycoons
Boris Berezovskiy and Sergey Lissovskiy. For instance, Yeltsin's bodyguard
Korzhakov claims that Berezovskiy came to him after the murder and alleged
that either Gusinskiy or Lissovskiy must have killed Listyev. The film shows
Skuratov making allegations about the veracity of Berezovskiy's testimony.
Archive pictures are shown of Berezovskiy speaking about a search carried out
in the offices of Berezovskiy's Logovaz company on the day of Listyev's
funeral. The search was later stopped after a phone call from a high-ranking
official.

The second part of the film profiles Ivan Vyvchiy, one of the people who
confessed to having killed Listyev. The investigation subsequently decided
that Vyvchiy was not the murderer because he confused various details and did
not know Listyev's address.

The authors of the film say that do not believe that, under the present-day
authorities, Russia will ever know the names of those who commissioned the
murder.

The programme is dubbed onto VSL 404 C and C2.

********

#9
Wall Street Journal Europe
October 5, 2001
U.S., Russia Allegiance in War on Terror May Stall Baltic States' Entry
Into NATO
By BENJAMIN SMITH
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE

As the U.S. and Russia step up cooperation in the global war on terror,
NATO's planned expansion faces growing uncertainty.

The three Baltic states in particular are worried that they could be denied
full membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in deference to
Russia, which opposes their entry. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, along with
Slovakia and Slovenia, had been considered frontrunners to receive
invitations to join NATO at the alliance's summit in Prague next fall. But in
the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on America, the U.S. needs Russia's support
in the struggle against terrorism.

Reflecting this concern, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called on the
Baltics last week to "build cooperation with Russia" in a letter to the three
countries' foreign ministers.

"The fear here is that we could be sold out," says Atis Lejins, director of
the Latvian Institute of International affairs.

Off the Agenda

Since Sept. 11, the debate over whether the alliance should take in Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia has all but disappeared from international agenda.

At a summit starting Friday in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, leaders from
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania,
Slovenia, and Slovakia, were supposed to focus on enlargement. Now, they will
discuss the new global security concerns.

"If you mention NATO enlargement to a [U.S.] senator or congressman at the
moment, they look at you as if you were mad," says Anatol Lieven, a senior
associate at the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace in Washington. "Before
Sept. 11, enlargement to the Baltics was looking overwhelming probable. Now
it is still possible, but the balance has shifted."

The choice is not simply between completing and delaying enlargement; it
could also concern what form the NATO alliance takes. In a visit to Brussels
on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country could
drop opposition to Baltic membership if NATO were transformed from a military
to a "political organization." To the former Soviet republics in the Baltics,
Russia's inclusion in the alliance's decision-making process would be almost
as bad as no enlargement at all.

"NATO would become a talking shop," Mr. Lejins says. "Russia would have
turned NATO into the OSCE," or Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson tried to reassure candidates earlier
this week in Berlin. "We will not let the terrorist attacks of last month
derail our agenda," he said, arguing that the attacks have actually
"reinforced the logic of NATO enlargement -- because the broad coalitions we
need to respond make the notion of 'ins' and 'outs' ever less valid." But the
political leaders who control NATO, particularly in Washington, haven't
commented directly on enlargement since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Another key source of Baltic worry is the abrupt shift in Western attitudes
to Russia's war in Chechnya. The Baltic states identify strongly with the
Chechen fight to break from Moscow. A street in the Latvian capital is named
for slain Chechen leader Dzhokar Dudayev. "We know what it is like to be
called 'bandits' and then see actions applied to an entire country," said
Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves, referring to the Soviet battle
against Baltic partisans after World War II.

Rising Influence

In a sign of Russia's rising strategic importance, and of its influence, the
West has stepped down from condemnations of the Russian campaign in Chechnya.
President Bush recently joined Russia in linking Chechen fighters to global
terrorist groups, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on the West
to re-evaluate its attitude to the Chechen war.

But while many backers of Baltic membership in NATO wait nervously for
signals from Washington, others say that the Sept. 11 attacks will confirm
the need for enlargement. "We're not going to fight a war against terrorism
by compromising other peoples' freedom," says Bruce Jackson, a Republic
defense strategist who is close to the Bush administration. "Nobody's even
thinking about it."

Baltic officials also hope that process has proceeded far enough that it
cannot be turned back. The NATO candidates late last month submitted their
"membership action plans," detailing their technical progress toward meeting
NATO standards.

Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Giedrius Cekuolis said the attacks could
delay, but couldn't stop, enlargement.

"We are driving toward NATO, and suddenly we see an overturned car in the
road, and people are wandering around and trying to help the injured," he
said. "Naturally the traffic stops for some time, but the road is still
there."

*******

#10
Fischer-Russia mustn't abuse Chechnya human rights

BERLIN, Oct 6 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said on
Saturday that Russia's justified fight to protect its territorial integrity
did not give it the right to abuse human rights in Chechnya.

Fischer said in a speech that it was right to regard existing conflicts
around the world in a new light following the September 11 attacks on the
United States, which has responded by trying to build a global coalition to
fight terror.

But Fischer, a member of Germany's Greens party, said the world must not
forget its fundamental values in the fight against terror.

"The differentiated view of Chechnya should not lead to our suddenly
forgetting our own fundamental values of adhering to human rights and of not
accepting the breach of human rights," Fischer told a meeting of his Greens
party in Berlin.

Fischer said Russia was right to fight separatism which could unleash a huge
potential for conflict if unchecked.

"Russia has a right and duty to defend its territorial integrity. And Russia
has the right and the duty to defend the life, freedom and property of its
citizens. But that does not justify human rights abuses which in part are
being investigated by Russian prosecutors," Fischer said.

His comments appear to put him at odds with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who
hinted last month that the West would take a softer line towards Russian
military action in Chechnya after Moscow offered support in the war against
terrorism.

Schroeder had said during a visit to Berlin by Russian President Vladimir
Putin: "As regards Chechnya there will be and must be a more differentiated
evaluation in world opinion."

Schroeder's comment marked a change from persistent Western criticism of
Moscow's military engagement in the region which the Kremlin says is aimed
against Chechen "terrorists."

*******

#11
The Independent (UK)
6 October 2001
There is no such thing as a friendly tyrant `No amount of Russian
co-operation will justify a guilty silence over Chechnya'
BY FERGAL KEANE
The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent

IT WAS the week when the teacher unveiled a new moral atlas. Gone the age of
self-interest, enter the era of universal interdependence. Mr Blair called it
the "new world community" - wisely avoiding the booby- trapped word "order" -
and was cheered to the rafters by an admiring press. It was not the time to
get into a cost analysis or goal attainability study; on the eve of war there
is no jingoism but a lot of righteousness, and the righteous are indeed bold.
After "the event that changed everything", we appear set on nothing less than
a campaign to remake the world.

To be fair, Mr Blair's Government has already proved a great deal more
willing to engage with the developing (and deteriorating) world than almost
any of its modern predecessors. British forces have helped to prevent
massacres in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and East Timor, and on
issues such as Third World debt, this country has been among the more
enlightened Western nations.

As an advocate of engagement with the world's more desperate places, I was
glad to see him single out Africa for special mention. A scar on the
conscience of the world, said Mr Blair, promising that a genocide in Rwanda
would not be allowed to happen again. I would assume that also means a Bosnia
wouldn't be allowed to happen again or an East Timor or wherever some
dictatorial nasty decides to massacre his people.

It is a tall order. My heart is with him all the way, but my head feels wary.
Presuming that Mr Blair means what he said, then Britain is committing itself
to be at the forefront of a worldwide struggle against tyranny and poverty.
Dig out any Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch annual report and you
will see the scale of the task. Much was made of how the American media saw
the speech. I would have been more interested in the reaction of the Saudis
or the Russians or the Chinese.

My fear is less that Mr Blair is asking us to embrace the impossible - the
fight is both good and possible - but that the battle will be fought on
ground that is too narrow, circumscribed by political compromise and moral
sophistry. The first problem is the nature of some of our partners. We are
being asked to ally ourselves with people whose contempt for human rights is
notorious. In the very week that Mr Blair spoke of a new world community, he
jetted off to Moscow to meet with President Putin. The Americans were busy
mollifying the Saudis at the same time.

The justification for allying ourselves with such people is clear, even if it
does induce a moral queasiness: the existential threat to Western democracies
is so great that concern about an ally's human-rights record takes second
place or is suppressed entirely. That was the justification for our alliance
with Stalin in the Second World War and America's support for any number of
odious regimes during the Cold War. In the former case it was simply
unavoidable, in the latter cynical and debasing.

Of course, political life demands messy compromise, unpleasant alliances and
no end of fudging. But as I understand it, Mr Blair is proposing we take a
more principled view of politics. Where does that leave our relationship with
Mr Putin? He may be the best thing for Russia at the moment and he was
democratically elected. But his army has been on a rampage in Chechnya for
years. The rebels it fights are a murderous bunch, but the behaviour of the
Russian forces is enough to have its commanders indicted for war crimes
several times over. This, of course, will not happen. Even before the events
of 11 September, the British Government would have run a million miles from
suggesting that the commanders who sent troops into the village of
Alkhan-Kala should be investigated for war crimes.

That operation involved the detention of hundreds of civilians. According to
Human Rights Watch, which interviewed the survivors, there was torture and
execution and a mass grave.

That is the kind of stuff that has landed Mr Milosevic in the dock and which
is daily described before the UN War Crimes Tribunals at the Hague and
Arusha. But Alkhan-Kala and its dead will be buried because there is no place
for them just now in the new world community. They are an embarrassment.

The second worry is that, for all the good intentions, the war against the
terror of Islamic extremists will be so all consuming that the scar of Africa
will continue to be ignored. On the very day that Mr Blair made his speech,
the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe - the one headed by Robert Mugabe's friend -
decided that the government could continue to seize white farms - after an
agreement brokered by the Commonwealth under which Mr Mugabe promised not to
violate the law while redistributing land. Since the agreement was signed,
there have been 25 further farm invasions, freedom of the press continues to
be trampled, foreign journalists are still banned and Zimbabwe's progress
towards ruin accelerates. In the post-11 September world there was scant
coverage or comment on Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe has assumed that the world is
preoccupied and likely to remain so for a long time to come.

There has been no firm condemnation yet from Britain (the result of
preoccupation rather than indifference), and it is fair to say that even the
newly internationalised George Bush would find it hard to place Zimbabwe on a
map. But Mugabe and the crisis in Chechnya matter. One is being ignored
because it has no apparent relevance to the current terrorism crisis, the
other because we need Mr Putin on our side. These two human rights crises
matter because a project of the kind Mr Blair outlined demands consistency
and courage. A foreign policy that takes seriously the idea of a new world
community cannot turn blind eyes to human rights abuse or regard certain
countries and their leaders as being above the law.

In Chechnya we cannot intervene for obvious political and military reasons.
But we do have a choice about the kind of language used in meetings with the
Russians, and we do have a choice about the promises we make. No amount of
Russian co-operation in the war against bin Laden and his killers will
justify a guilty silence over Chechnya. And I don't accept that the planned
military action against bin Laden and the Taliban is somehow morally
comparable to the rampages by Russian forces in the Caucuses. Mr Putin is
anxious to make that connection, but he should be quickly disabused.

As for Zimbabwe, it will be difficult to persuade anybody here that we should
be getting involved in that mess just now. But a crisis of horrendous
proportions is unfolding and Britain is already heavily involved. It is the
former colonial power, the guarantor of funding under which land is to be
re-distributed and the country whose Prime Minister has promised to make
Africa a foreign policy priority. Britain urgently needs a plan and a voice.

If Mr Blair has really thought his promise through, we needn't regard the
Brighton speech as a charter for the impossible. If what he is talking about
is the incremental construction of a more just world order, doing first the
small good things where we can, then hurrah and to hell with the cynics. That
is not utopianism but real idealism, and it's the best chance we've got. We
need to put the principles into practice now.

*******

#12
The Guardian (UK)
6 October 2001
Our Afghan warlords: Arming the Taliban's opponents will only deepen the
agony of a ruined nation
BY JONATHAN STEELE (j.steele@guardian.co.uk)

Ironic, says the TV reporter, as his footage shows sacks of American flour
being unloaded for the tide of desperate Afghans fleeing their homes in fear
of American attacks. The word is low-key, mildly critical, not daring to
stick its neck out. Ironic? Come off it. The policy is crazy. Can
decision-makers seriously recommend military action which drives people in
terror out of their homes to trek with their families across mountains and
deserts and huddle before the closed gates of Pakistan and Iran, and then say
we will feed you out of the kindness of our hearts because "our struggle is
not with you but with your rulers"?

Before a single cruise missile has been launched, hundreds of thousands of
Afghans are already on the move. Imagine the even greater panic and
dislocation when the first wave of Tomahawks rolls in and the policy of
"bombs and butter" takes off in earnest.

But two weeks of TV coverage of the human misery which is Afghanistan have
not been entirely ineffective. They have provided a pause for thought and
allowed the desire for revenge to cool. They have also given millions of
people a crash course on the reality of this wretched country. A new
generation of politicians, who barely knew where the place was a month ago,
busily mugs up on the differences between Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara and Pashtun.
Some are starting to understand that this is a place of constantly shifting
ethnic, tribal and regional alliances where central government has always
been fragile.

Time has also shown how hard it is going to be to prove Osama bin Laden's
hand behind the terror attacks, at least for the Muslim world to be
convinced. The hijackers' identities are relatively clear. Where they lived
and trained over the past few years is also coming into focus. But evidence
that their orders came from Bin Laden has not yet been found. The soldiers
are dead but the captains, let alone the enemy generals in this war, may
never be implicated.

So the target of the planned American attacks is no longer just the suspected
mastermind. The aim is being widened, or at least deflected. Unsure where Bin
Laden is hiding, and eager for visible signs of success, the Americans - and
Tony Blair - proclaim the Taliban leadership is equally legitimate a target.
Instead of going for the bull's eye, any hit on the dartboard will be
trumpeted as proof we've scored.

The phasing of the promised war is also shifting. Missile strikes will just
be the hors d'oeuvre. The main meal will be a sustained campaign to arm the
Taliban's opponents, the Northern Alliance, so that they can seize Kabul and
take power. We will then help them form a broad-based government and bring
back the deposed King Zahir Shah. Afghanistan is in the midst of a civil war.
We are not invading but responding to an invitation by one side for aid. The
Northern Alliance may not be angels. Their attitudes to women's rights and
social progress may be unappetising but they are not as bad as the Taliban.
So we are really liberators.

It sounds tempting, even noble. But wrong. I never expected to be an "old
Afghan hand". The term sounds irredeemably colonial. But perhaps I deserve
the label, as my own crash course in Afghanistan began in 1981 and I have
reported from there six times since. On each visit the country had slipped
deeper into the jaws of ever-widening war. During the Soviet period, I was in
the small and unfashionable minority which came to the view that the
Moscow-supported governments of Babrak Karmal and Najibullah were lesser
evils compared to the ravages which the CIA- and MI6-backed moja hedin were
likely to cause if they ever took power. Ravage Afghanistan they did. In the
communist period, Kabul was virtually unscarred by war - and women had rights
- but when the mojahedin moved in, they tore it apart.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pashtun fundamentalist, shelled the city for two
years, destroying half its buildings and killing 25,000 civilians because he
thought the Tajik wing of the mojahedin "alliance" was not offering him
enough power. A year later, Ahmed Shah Massoud, lionised abroad as the
greatest leader of the anti-communist and anti-Taliban resistance, turned his
guns on his Shi'ite Hazara allies who were concentrated in the western part
of Kabul, killing thousands. Yet, in a pattern of cynical warlordism with
which Afghan history is replete, Massoud, Hekmatyar and Karim Khalili, the
Hazara leader, were allies again within months.

The current talk of a "broad-based government" with the ex-king as its
figurehead is also nothing new. UN envoys rushed to his palatial home in Rome
in 1988 to urge him to return when the Russians agreed to withdraw. The
effort foundered on the king's chronic unwillingness to take a lead, the fact
that even among many Pashtun he is not regarded with respect, let alone among
non-Pashtun, and on the mojahedins' refusal - ardently supported by
Washington - to give any political role to the ex-communists.

But the most promising idea of those bleak times did come from the Americans.
The final phase of the Geneva talks, which led to the Soviet withdrawal,
centred on the question of arms supplies once the Russians pulled out. The
Russians wanted the right to go on aiding their ally, Najibullah, while
insisting the Americans, Saudis, and Pakista nis no longer armed the
mojahedin. In reply, George Shultz, the secretary of state, proposed
"negative symmetry". Both sides would stop arming their clients.

When the Russians refused, the Americans said this was unacceptable and so
the two superpowers agreed on exactly the opposite of what Shultz had
proposed. There would be "positive symmetry". The phrase is now forgotten but
as a euphemism for an arms race it deserves a high rank in the lexicon of
linguistic cynicism alongside "collateral damage".

Now is the time to revive "negative symmetry". Instead of giving yet more
arms to the Northern Alliance, as Russia and Iran are already doing, and the
United States proposes to do, the outside world should be saying enough is
enough. Pressure also needs to be put on Pakistan to end its supplies to the
Taliban. No arms embargo is ever complete, especially in a country, such as
Afghanistan, with porous borders. But it is far better to press the parties
in a civil war to reach a compromise by denying them weapons and fuel for
their hardware rather than by Washington's proposed strategy of trying to
defeat the Taliban by arming their opponents and aiding them with bombing
runs and missile attacks on Taliban positions.

Foreigners have intervened in Afghan politics for too long and always with
disastrous results. The country is awash with weapons and already in ruins.
The United Nations' efforts to find a political settlement, which were
revived four years ago, need to be refocused on the search for a federal
structure in which regions and ethnic groups will have greater autonomy. Hope
of strong central government in a country so split and traumatised is an
illusion. Above all, air strikes and yet more supplies of arms are the wrong
way to go.

******

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