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Russia sneers at U.S. in media freedom spat
By Peter Graff

MOSCOW, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Moscow lashed out at Washington on Monday for criticising a court ruling to shut an independent television station, the latest sign that a post-September 11 honeymoon in Russian-U.S. ties is fraying.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had said on Friday the United States was "disappointed" by the "strong appearance of political pressure on the courts" which ordered shut the only nationwide station still outside the Kremlin's grip, TV6.

In an angry statement described as a reply to the U.S. remarks, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the station's case was a purely business affair.

"The situation around TV6 is above all an economic dispute among its shareholders," it said.

Washington had pressed Moscow to keep its courts independent, it said, but "regretfully, the media and political structures in countries that consider themselves the standard of democracy often make contradictory demands on Russia."

The statement was written in the sarcastic tone that often characterised Russian diplomatic language during disputes before ties warmed in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Other recent statements have also sounded shrill.

Earlier on Monday, the ministry said U.S. diplomats had breached "generally recognised international norms" by appearing at a rally in support of a journalist convicted of treason for telling Japanese media that the Russian navy dumped toxic waste.

And on Friday Moscow accused Washington of maintaining "a Cold War-era system of open discrimination" for keeping Russia on a list of states with a poor track record of stopping the spread of weapons technology.

DISPUTE REVIVES QUESTIONS ABOUT PUTIN

Despite the Kremlin's insistence the case is purely about business, the TV6 dispute has revived questions about President Vladimir Putin's tolerance of dissent.

Most of TV6's journalists came from NTV, a private station that Kremlin-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom seized in a boardroom coup last year.

Media Minister Mikhail Lesin said on Monday Moscow would revoke TV6's broadcast licence as soon as a commission was set up to oversee its court-ordered liquidation.

A "conditional tender" would be held immediately for temporary control of the station's broadcast frequencies, followed by a full-blown tender for permanent control in April, Lesin said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio.

He said the government hoped to keep TV6 on the air in some form, with minimal interruption for viewers. But he said it was too early to predict whether it would be possible for the members of the station's current staff to stay on.

"Nobody is preventing the journalistic collective from setting up their own company, competing in the tenders and bidding for the frequency," he said. The station's journalists say they doubt they will be given a fair shot.

The station is majority-owned by Boris Berezovsky, a businessman and one-time Kremlin insider who has become a fierce critic of Putin and lives in self-imposed exile.

The court ordered it shut at the request of a pension fund controlled by Russia's largest oil company LUKoil, which owns 15 percent, which said the station was poorly managed.

For now, TV6 continues to broadcast. Its NTV-veteran journalists, who staged on-air strikes and large public protests when that station was taken over last year, have been more subdued this time around, staying at their jobs.

But they have hammered home the point that somebody powerful seems to want them gone.

In a tongue-in-cheek advertisement for flagship political programme Itogi (Summing up), they show host and station general director Yevgeny Kiselyov as James Bond, narrowly escaping endless assassination attempts by a sinister villain.