Johnson's Russia List
#6260
22 May 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. RIA Novosti: ANNA KOURNIKOVA OF RUSSIA IS WORLD'S MOST SEXY FEMME,
SAY FRENCHMEN.
2. Interfax: George W. Bush to stay at Marriott Grand Hotel.
3. Interfax: Over 50% of Russians do not see U.S. as friend.
4. RIA Novosti: RUSSIA HAS GROUNDS TO SUPPORT NATO'S EXPANSION.
(Nikonov)
5. Interfax: Russian armed forces to be cut to 1 million in three years.
6. Izvestiya: Statistics Show Declining Demand, Cash Problem in Russian
Industry.
7. Obshchaya Gazeta: Economist Vladimir Mau Comments on Economic Growth in
Russia.
8. Reuters: Moscow says to grill Bush on key issues at summit.
9. AP: Russian Lawmaker Discusses Arms Deal. (Arbatov)
10. Arms Control Association press conference.
11. Washington Post Live Online: Strobe Talbot will be there May 23.
12. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Amy Knight, The Presidents Karamazov.
In George W. Bush's eagerness for this week's Russia-U.S. summit, the White
House is overlooking the darker side of Vladimir Putin's presidency.
13. San Francisco Chronicle: Anna Badkhen, Hate crimes going unpunished in
Russia. Rights groups urge Bush to speak up.
14. slate.com: Anne Applebaum, Can George Bush Westernize Russia?
15. St. Petersburg Times: Vladimir Kovalyev, A Bureaucracy That Cuts Just
One Way.
16. Asia Times: Sergei Blagov, Growth figures strong for Russian crime.
17. strana.ru: "Protection" in the Shadows - the Workings of Russia's
Hidden Economy. Police and the authorities in on the action, says report.
18. US Department of State's Patterns of Global Terrorism-2001:
Eurasia Overview and Russia sections.]
*******
#1
ANNA KOURNIKOVA OF RUSSIA IS WORLD'S MOST SEXY FEMME, SAY FRENCHMEN
PARIS, MAY 21. /FROM RIA NOVOSTI'S CORRESPONDENT LEONID KOKOVICH/ -- Tennis
player Anna Kournikova of Russia tops the list of the world's most sexy
women, according to the French magazine for men FHM (For Him Magazine).
The magazine's poll was held through the Internet on February 15 through May
5th of this year and covered over 200,000 Frenchmen.
The runner-up is photo model Monica Beluci and the third is Alissa Milano of
Italy.
Among 20 most attractive women in the world are Jenifer Lopez, Britney Spears
and film star Catherine Zeta-Johnes of the United States, French film actress
and photo model Leticia Casta.
According to this poll, Julia Roberts ranks 27th, Mila Jovovic 46th. French
film actress Sophie Marceau has been pushed down from the 56th to the 88th
top-sexy role in the world.
*******
#2
George W. Bush to stay at Marriott Grand Hotel
MOSCOW. May 21 (Interfax) - U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to stay
at the Marriott Grand-Hotel on Tverskaya Street during his visit to Moscow,
sources told Interfax on Tuesday.
No special preparations for the U.S. president's visit are being
conducted, except for additional security measures.
Interfax has reported that there were many security officials at the hotel
on Tuesday, who did not allow a crew from a Russian TV channel to work in the
hotel's lobby, and seized its videotape.
"I cannot give official confirmation that George Bush will stay at this
hotel. I can only say that former U.S. President Bill Clinton stayed at the
hotel during his two visits," a hotel official told Interfax on condition of
anonymity.
The hotel official said the presidential suite has an area of 135 square
meters, and consists of a parlor with a fireplace, an armchair, a large sofa,
and small table, a den with an armchair and a writing table, and a kitchen.
The furniture in the suite's bedroom is made of rare wood, the source told
Interfax.
The presidential suite costs $1,765 a day, without the 20% VAT and 5%
sales tax. The cheapest room in Marriott Hotel costs $330 without the taxes.
The hotel has the right to change prices without prior notice.
The hotel will be closed from May 23 to May 26, and the last guest will
leave on May 22.
The sources told Interfax that it was no coincidence that Bush chose this
hotel, as it meets U.S. standards.
The nine-storey hotel was built in 1997 and has 390 rooms, including the
presidential suite, two diplomatic suites, three restaurants, a bar, a
fitness center with a swimming pool and a gym.
It is unknown whether the U.S. president will use these facilities.
"Clinton simply had no time for this, as his visit schedule was pretty
tough," the sources said.
*******
#3
Over 50% of Russians do not see U.S. as friend
MOSCOW. May 21 (Interfax) - More that a half of Russians (58%) think the
United States "is not a friendly state," Alexander Oslon, head of the Public
Opinion Foundation, said at a round-table conference in Moscow on Tuesday.
Oslon referred to data provided by a poll involving 1,500 respondents
conducted on May 11-12 in a number of Russia's regions.
Although only 25% of those polled said the United States "is a friendly
state," this is still an increase from 17% received in a poll conducted in
early March, when 71% of Russians spoke out against the United States. Oslon
blamed this figure on the poor performance of Russian athletes and tensions
at the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Another poll showed that more than a half of Russians described NATO as
"aggressive," compared with 38% in early 1997, and 50% in late 2001.
*******
#4
RUSSIA HAS GROUNDS TO SUPPORT NATO'S EXPANSION
MOSCOW, May 21, 2002 /RIA Novosti correspondent/ -- Russia has no reasons to
support the expansion of NATO but one - after its expansion NATO will become
a very weak organisation from the military point of view. Vyacheslav Nikonov,
president of the Politika Foundation, spoke about it on Tuesday at a press
conference in RIA Novosti.
In his opinion, after the expansion, relations between Russia and NATO will
depend in many respects on what the North Atlantic Alliance will be like. At
the present time, it is impossible to forecast the future of NATO, said
Nikonov. Western experts, too, do not have the answer to this question. "The
future of NATO is still vague - it can become a more influential organisation
or more marginal when nothing in this world depends on us," said Vyacheslav
Nikonov.
At the same time, the president of the Politika Foundation believes that
after November this organisation will be more anti-Russian because of the
entry of new countries into it. This fact does not presuppose a higher level
of Russia's relations with this organisation," believes the expert.
******
#5
Russian armed forces to be cut to 1 million in three years
MOSCOW. May 21 (Interfax) - The manpower of the Russian armed forces will be
reduced to one million within three years, a source in the Russian Defense
Ministry told Interfax on Tuesday.
There is no official data on the strength of the country's armed forces,
but experts believe there were nearly 1.26 million men under arms in early
2001.
The reduction that is to be carried out before the end of 2005 is
dictated, above all, by a shortage of finances, the source said. It will be
carried out in a way not affecting the country's military security, he said.
For details, see the Interfax- Military News Agency newswire.
******
#6
Statistics Show Declining Demand, Cash Problem in Russian Industry
Izvestiya
16 May 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Yekaterina Kravchenko: "The Industry Is Switching to
Surrogates"
April has not brought the long-awaited growth in
solvent demand for Russian industrial products. According to a study of
the Institute for the Economic Problems of the Transitional Period
(IEPP), the sales of products for money have been declining for the fifth
successive month. Experts say that such a continuous and deep drop in
decline has not been observed since early 1999. For the first time in
three years, the Russian industry has started preparing for personnel
downsizing.
The financial and economic condition of Russian enterprises is continuing
to deteriorate. According to the IEPP data, solvent demand and real
profits continued to plummet in April and production costs again were
noted to grow.
"Solvent demand is going down to zero. There is no money in
circulation. The consumers who need our equipment cannot buy it," says
Andrey Kozlov, the commercial director of OAO [joint-stock company]
Excavator Plant Kovrovets. In his words, the negative tendencies that
appeared in November of 2001 are continuing and positive changes are
nowhere to be seen. A radical decline in solvent demand is confirmed
also by Aleksandr Nemetkin, deputy general director of OAO Strommashina.
"Since last December, the supply of non-cash deals has grown
significantly," he points out. "Commodity turnover is clearly falling.
Many enterprises are currently grappling with the problem of 'hard
cash.' To keep running, they are forced to credit each other. But the
effectiveness of this method is not limitless," says Galina Biryukova,
chief financial officer of OAO Krasnyy Perekop.
To keep their facilities running, the Russian enterprises are beginning
increasingly often to resort to non-cash methods of selling their
products. "No barter operations have been observed as yet at the sector
level but the volume of bill of exchange and set-off deals has increased
in the chemical, petrochemical, and light industries," says Sergey
Tsukhlo, chief of the IEPP market survey center.
Prospects for the future are also pessimistic. According to the IEPP
surveys, the forecasts of industrialists for solvent demand and
production remain at one of the lowest levels in the past three years.
"The employment forecasts have changed radically as well. For the first
time since April of 1999, they have become negative," Tsukhlo says. For
the first time since the default, most of the enterprises are preparing
for personnel cuts. The seemingly resolved problem of wage arrears has
resurfaced. According to data from the State Committee for Statistics,
as of March of 2002 the total debt on wages has increased by 5.3 percent
since 1 February. Notably, this increase was 16.3 percent in social
sectors.
If solvent demand does not go up in the immediate future, the industry
will see mass personal cuts similar to the post-default layoffs in 1999.
Analysts say that forestry (the government is currently working out a
program of its reform) and the light industry are the most exposed
sectors.
********
#7
Economist Vladimir Mau Comments on Economic Growth in Russia
Obshchaya Gazeta
16 May 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Interview with Vladimir Mau, head of the Russian Federation
Government's Working Center for Economic Reform, conducted by
correspondent Dmitriy Dokuchayev: "High Growth Is Not Main Virtue"
High growth is not the main virtue. Vladimir
Mau believes that structural transformations are more important.
At the behest of President Putin, the problem of insufficiently high
rates of economic growth has become practically the main one for the
government. Does the domestic economy possess the objective capacities
for developing faster than it is today? That was the topic of our
discussion with the head of the Working Center for Economic Reform
(RTsER) under the Government of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Mau.
[Correspondent] Vladimir Aleksandrovich, how do you appraise the
macro-economic results achieved since the beginning of the year?
[Mau] On the whole, all the main parameters repeat the results of
last year: A decline in January-February, and a restoration of rates in
the Spring... For now, everything is proceeding normally.
[Correspondent] But the President, judging by his message to the
Federal Assembly, is critically inclined in regard to the insufficient
rates of economic growth...
[Mau] I am troubled by the excess attention given by the press to
the problem of quantitative indicators of economic growth. That same
president's message raises many important problems, and primarily
institutional factors, which are supposed to ensure growth. Of course,
economic growth is important. But it is important in the long-range
perspective, and not just for one year. Technically and statistically,
it is not so difficult to arrange economic growth in the course of one
year, as Lukashenko did in Belarus, for example. The question is how
stable it will be in a 10-year perspective. And there is a big problem
here, because the short-term (market-related) and long-term interests
often do not coincide. We should not forget about structural reforms,
which are the source of stable, long-term growth.
[Correspondent] What is the goal of such a structural
transformation?
[Mau] To ensure a post-industrial breakthrough. Not simply growth
of the traditional sectors--metallurgy, the food industry and others--but
the development of a sector of high technology services. While
admitting the fact that growth is very important, and especially per
capita growth, we must clearly understand that the figures which
characterize it cannot be the only criterion for the political appraisal
of effectiveness of the government's activity.
[Correspondent] Then how are we to understand the president's
criticism?
[Mau] Obviously, I did not ask him, but if you look carefully at
the message as a whole, you will see that it proposes a list of in-depth
systematic reforms, which are difficult to implement in a pre-electoral
period, but which are important from the standpoint of ensuring stable
growth. And the president is insisting on them!
[Correspondent] What reforms do you mean?
[Mau] Adoption of the packet [of laws] on de-bureaucratization,
which is associated with a review of the rights of auditing
organizations, as well as with problems of standardization and
certification. Continued development of tax reform, primarily a special
tax regimen for small business, as well as legislation on free economic
zones. Re-structuring of state expenditures, the system of which has
developed most ineffectively in our country. Reform of municipal
services--not so much at the federal level, as at the municipal.
Naturally, transformation of legislation concerning banks and financial
markets. Finally, continued movement in the direction of the WTO [World
Trade Organization].
[Correspondent] One gets the impression that, if world oil prices
rise, then everything is good in our economy, and vice versa. And
reforms have nothing to do with this. To what degree is such a notion
correct?
[Mau] It is partly correct. The economic growth of the past 2
years really was not directly associated with reforms, although the
connection with oil prices is also a bit more complicated. Growth is
the result of actions by the government, which for the first time in many
years implemented a responsible and very strict macro-economic policy.
Specifically, bankruptcy legislation has begun to operate in our country.
While before, non-payments were the norm--and perhaps, one might say,
even a matter of honor for businessmen and managers--now it is entirely
realistic that one may lose one's enterprise for non-payment of debts.
We can view the situation surrounding TV-6 in various ways, but from a
purely economic standpoint, this is a clear demonstration to business of
the fact that it is not a good idea to have overdue debts. And the
reforms of 2001-2002 will play their positive role in the economy
somewhat later.
[Correspondent] From time to time, there is talk of the fact that
the ruble is overvalued in our country, and that it would not be a bad
idea to reduce its exchange rate in relation to the dollar. Do you
agree with such an approach?
[Mau] The ruble is not overvalued. On the contrary, it is
undervalued. But from the standpoint of stimulating domestic
production--and, correspondingly, economic growth--a cheaper ruble is
more preferable. I believe that the answer to your question depends
entirely on the dynamics of oil prices--that is, on the influx of dollars
into the country. In the case of high oil prices, growth of the real
exchange rate of the ruble is inevitable. In the case of moderate or
low oil prices, we may expect stability in the real exchange rate--that
is, a reduction in the nominal exchange rate in a ratio which is
approximately equal to inflation. With low oil prices, mild and precise
devaluation is possible. In any case, the gold-currency reserves of the
Bank of Russia are such that the situation is fully controlled by the
monetary authorities.
[Correspondent] Your prognosis: What kind of economic growth will
we get by the end of the year?
[Mau] It will be on the order of 4 percent. Thank God, our
economy is in a state of inertia, and cannot allow itself to make any
drastic leaps.
[Correspondent] You are rather secure in your appraisals. But
what, in your opinion, is the greatest danger threatening our economy?
[Mau] Rejection of the current conservative macro-economic policy.
For example, the attempt to stimulate economic growth at the expense of
unsecured money is extremely dangerous. As well as the implementation
of industrial policy in the traditional understanding: Granting someone
preferences, artificially establishing someone's priorities... In
general, it is dangerous to employ any exotic measures in the sphere of
economic policy. There is one very simple criterion: We should not
adopt anything that is unintelligible to the average investor who reads
the Financial Times.
********
#8
Moscow says to grill Bush on key issues at summit
May 21, 2002
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov made clear Tuesday
that this week's Russian-U.S. summit would not be all smiles and handshakes,
with Moscow preparing to press Washington on a number of sticking points.
In a keynote address to parliamentary hawks ahead of a meeting between
President Bush and President Vladimir Putin, Ivanov set out Moscow's stance
on major issues including the U.S. presence on Russia's southern fringe, NATO
and Iraq.
"We will press the United States for transparency on the question of the
deployment of foreign military contingents in Central Asia," Ivanov told a
joint session of the conservative international affairs committees of both
houses of parliament.
"This question cannot but worry us."
The former Soviet Central Asian states, often referred to as Russia's "soft
underbelly," clamored to align themselves with Washington in its war against
terror in nearby Afghanistan.
Ex-Soviet Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan all host U.S. troops and
aircraft. Analysts said Ivanov's address could be an attempt to set down the
Kremlin's stance ahead of negotiations, after Moscow was publicly seen to
have lost out in a compromise arms deal, flagged as the summit's centerpiece.
"U.S. diplomacy often simply states that Russia has agreed to some
compromise, and then begins worldwide propaganda to say Russia has agreed to
this compromise," said Sergei Markov, foreign policy editor of the
Kremlin-linked strana.ru Web site.
"It is because of this that Ivanov is saying: 'Guys, we have not agreed to
these things'."
The arms deal, due to be signed during the summit, was made possible only
when Russia dropped objections to Washington's plans to stockpile rather than
destroy hundreds of warheads.
Hawkish voices, who say Putin has sold Russia short, did not stop the Kremlin
welcoming the deal.
AXIS OF EVIL
Ivanov told the Duma and Federation Council committees that Russia had not
changed its position on Iraq, a key sticking point between Washington and
Moscow.
Moscow has close economic ties with Baghdad and strongly opposes U.S. strikes
against Iraq, a country Bush has dubbed part of an "axis of evil" along with
Iran and North Korea.
"We are doing everything to keep events within the framework of political
regulation," Ivanov said. "The situation is complicated, mainly because of
U.S. threats to use force against Iraq."
Regarding NATO, Ivanov said that despite agreeing to forge closer ties with
the 19-member bloc, Russia was still against its eastward expansion and did
not wish to join the alliance.
"We understand that the establishment of the group of 20 will not stop the
widening of NATO," he said. "Russia's negative attitude to this expansion
process has not changed."
Ivanov said he hoped the creation of a body where Russia would sit alongside
the bloc's other members to debate strategic issues would help overhaul the
alliance.
Ivanov's address may also be an attempt to obtain similar clarity from the
United States, after Washington's plans to send military advisers to Georgia
prompted a storm in parliament.
"The crisis in U.S.-Russia relations over U.S. special forces in Georgia
erupted because the United States said there would be military advisers, but
the real number of men was 15 times larger," Markov said.
"Twenty people can be advisers, but 300 are a military division -- Moscow
agreed to advisers, not to a division."
The U.S. instructors, who arrived in Georgia on May 19, have as their mission
to train Georgia's disorganized and sometimes mutinous army to fight Muslim
militants on its own territory.
Bush arrives in Moscow Thursday for a three-day summit with Putin. He leaves
for the second part of the summit, in St Petersburg, Friday.
*******
#9
Russian Lawmaker Discusses Arms Deal
May 21, 2002
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
MOSCOW (AP) - Despite some grumbling from nationalists that Russia caved in
to the United States, the nuclear arms deal to be signed this week faces no
serious opposition in the Russian parliament, a senior lawmaker said Tuesday.
Alexei Arbatov, deputy head of the parliament's defense affairs committee,
said the lower house, which is dominated by pro-government moderates, will
quickly rubber-stamp the deal.
``There are no doubts that any treaty signed by the president will be easily
approved,'' Arbatov said at a news conference.
The accord commits each country to cutting its nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to
2,200 warheads from the approximately 6,000 each is now allowed. It is to be
signed when President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in
Moscow this week.
The Bush administration reluctantly agreed to Moscow's push for a formal
treaty but brushed off Russian complaints about the Pentagon's plan to
stockpile some of the decommissioned weapons rather than destroy them.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met with lawmakers Tuesday to gather
support for deal, describing it as the best compromise Russia could hope for.
``It was the most that we could get,'' Ivanov said. ``The main achievement is
that we have managed to preserve the negotiation process.''
Ivanov also said the new treaty would free Russia from constraints on its
strategic nuclear forces contained in previous agreements, such as the ban on
the deployment of land-based missiles with multiple warheads - the kind of
weapons preferred by the Russian military for cost reasons.
Ivanov said a declaration also to be signed during the presidential summit
would reflect the ``limited character'' of the conceived U.S. missile defense
and the U.S. pledge that it wouldn't threaten Russia.
Ivanov also sought to allay lawmakers' concerns about U.S. military
deployment in Central Asia for the war in Afghanistan, saying Moscow would
try to ``determine the timeframe for their presence.''
``This issue can't leave us unconcerned,'' he said.
Russia's Communists and other hard-liners have assailed the nuclear deal and
Putin's support of the deployment of U.S. forces in the ex-Soviet republics
as national treason.
Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov said Tuesday that the party leaders
would meet this weekend to condemn the treaty and prepare a motion of
no-confidence in the government - a symbolic move given the Communists' weak
presence in the lower house.
Arbatov insisted the deal was the best Russia could get because its military
had damaged its ability to negotiate a better one by announcing plans to cut
its nuclear forces for lack of funds.
``The program of reduction of Russia's strategic nuclear forces has cut the
ground from under the feet of our negotiators,'' Arbatov said. ``When you try
to bargain without having anything to offer, it's hard to get any concessions
from your partner.''
He said the deal was a victory for Russia considering the Pentagon could
afford having as many warheads as it wanted, unlike the cash-strapped Russian
military.
Meanwhile, Ivanov and Undersecretary of State John Bolton met in Moscow on
Tuesday to put the finishing touches on the arms agreement and other security
documents due for signing at the summit, the Foreign Ministry said.
********
#10
From: Wade Boese [wade@armscontrol.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Subject: Arms Control Association press conference
Dear Mr. Johnson:
Over the past couple of days I have noticed your inclusion of a number of
press conferences regarding the upcoming Bush-Putin summit in the daily
Johnson emails.
Your Johnson-list recipients may be interested in the transcript of the Arms
Control Association's May 15 press conference featuring John Holum, former
undersecretary of state for arms control and international security;
Ambassador Rick Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state for South
Asia; and Ambassador James Goodby, former special representative to
President Bill Clinton for nuclear security and dismantlement. Daryl
Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, also
participated.
The panelists provided a very good description of what the proposed nuclear
arms reduction agreement is, as well as what it is not. They also discussed
future steps that were needed if the United States and Russia were to
eventually realize the goal of moving beyond their Cold War legacies,
something that has not yet transpired despite the Bush administration's
rhetoric.
A full transcript of the Association's press conference can be accessed at
http://www.armscontrol.org/aca/bpsumconmay02.asp.
*******
#11
Washington Post Live Online
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/02/authors_talbot052302.htm
"The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy"
With Strobe Talbot
Former Deputy Secretary of State
Thursday, May 23, 2002; 11 a.m. EDT
During the past ten years, few issues have mattered more to America's vital
interests then Russia's fate. The challenge of helping to steer post-Soviet
Russia -- with its thousands of nuclear weapons and seething ethnic and
political tensions -- has shaped the foreign policy of the past three
administrations.
In his new book, "The Russia Hand," former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbot delves into the many challenges President Clinton faced -- from
Ukrainian nuclear weapons and NATO expansion to Yeltsin's alcoholism and
Putin's rise to power.
Talbot will be online to take your questions and comments on the book and
Russian foreign policy under Clinton and the current administration.
Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.
Talbot joined the Clinton administration in 1993 with the responsibility for
Russia and the other new independent states of the former Soviet Union. He is
the author of six books on U.S.-Soviet relations and the translator/editor of
Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs. He is now the director of the Yale Center for
the Study of Globalization and will assume the presidency of the Brookings
Institution in Washington, D.C., later this year.
******
#12
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
20 May 2002
The Presidents Karamazov
In George W. Bush's eagerness for this week's Russia-U.S. summit, the White
House is overlooking the darker side of Vladimir Putin's presidency
By AMY KNIGHT
Amy Knight, adjunct research professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, is
author of Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors.
Now that Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin have reached an accord
on shrinking their nuclear arsenals and Russia is about to enter a new
"NATO-Russia Council," much of the work for the summit between the two
leaders in Moscow and St. Petersburg this week seems to have been done. Mr.
Bush even has so much time on his hands that, as he told Russian Foreign
Minister Ivan Ivanov recently, he is boning up on Dostoevsky, a native of St.
Petersburg.
Mr. Bush's time might be better spent reading some Russian history, starting
with Peter The Great, who founded Mr. Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg in
1703. Peter, who was the first tsar to travel abroad, built the city as a
"window on Europe" because he wanted to modernize Russia and draw it closer
to the West. But, although he introduced European customs and even made the
members of his court shave off their beards, Peter remained an autocrat,
ruling his country with an iron fist.
As the first Russian leader to come from St. Petersburg since the fall of the
monarchy in 1917, Mr. Putin has much in common with his historic predecessor.
Like Peter The Great, who gave his city a German name, President Putin is an
admirer of Germany, where he worked as a KGB officer and learned the
language. Mr. Putin also seems to love travelling abroad and clearly is
anxious to draw Russia closer to Europe and the West. Yet, when it comes to
adopting Western methods of democratic government, Mr. Putin also draws the
line.
Vladimir Putin's background in the KGB makes him particularly adept at
playing the dual roles of pragmatic policymaker abroad and tough guy at home.
During the Cold War, KGB officers were always more affable and at ease with
Westerners than Russian diplomats were. But when these sophisticated KGB
charmers were face to face with a dissident or a human-rights activist back
home, they would show their teeth.
Mr. Putin appears to have bent over backward to accommodate the Bush
administration since Sept. 11, welcoming American troops in Russia's back
yard of Central Asia, shrugging his shoulders when U.S. special forces
arrived in Georgia to assist in antiterrorist training, and appearing
flexible about NATO's eastward expansion. Now, after signing the new arms
treaty that will reduce the nuclear warheads of Russia and the United States
by two-thirds, Mr. Putin is said to be considering some sort of co-operation
with the United States on an antiballistic missile system.
The Russian President's overtures to the West have so dazzled American and
European officials that Western policymakers seem blind to Mr. Putin's darker
domestic side and to some disturbing trends in Russia. First, of course, is
the war in Chechnya, which has dragged on for two and a half years, with no
end in sight. The human toll continues to mount, with an estimated 300,000
Chechens displaced and the country devastated. The human-rights group
Memorial said last week that Russian troops in Chechnya continue, with
impunity, to conduct widespread "sweep operations," where they loot houses
and kill civilians. Unfortunately, Mr. Putin has shown little inclination to
pursue a political solution to the war by negotiating with Chechen leader
Aslan Maskhadov. Instead of distinguishing between Chechens who are fighting
for their national cause and the Islamic extremists who advocate terrorism,
Mr. Putin lumps them all together as "vipers" and demands their total
surrender.
The Russian government, relying heavily on former Putin colleagues in the
security services, has muzzled the country's independent media so
successfully that criticism of its policy toward Chechnya -- very vocal
during the earlier Chechen war under Boris Yeltsin -- has been silenced. In
fact, the Kremlin's control over the media is so pervasive that a virtual
personality cult, with fawning television and newspaper coverage, has
developed around the President.
Despite the cries of alarm from human-rights groups, the Bush administration
has apparently decided to put such matters on the back burner for this
summit. Mr. Bush and his advisers seem convinced that Mr. Putin has already
made huge concessions to the West and that he cannot be pushed further
without endangering his position at home. In reality, Mr. Putin has
sacrificed little. Muslim extremists pose a grave threat to the security of
Russia and its neighbouring states, so having the Americans shoulder much of
the burden of combating this threat was well worth the price of a U.S.
presence in Central Asia, or even in Georgia for that matter. As for Russia's
agreeing to reduce its nuclear arsenals, Russia needed this treaty more than
the Americans did, because the Russian government does not have the financial
resources to maintain all those weapons.
In being open to NATO's expansion to the East, Mr. Putin may be reconciling
himself to something he knows that Russia can do nothing about. He may also
have calculated that NATO's importance as a military alliance is declining in
any case. The missile defence program poses a more serious challenge to
Russia, and the Kremlin's stance on this issue is not yet clear, but the
program could take at least a decade to establish, which is a long way down
the road.
Whatever Mr. Putin may or may not have conceded to the West, the notion that
he is facing a lot of opposition at home because of his Western-oriented
foreign policy has little basis. The Russian President's popularity -- an
estimated 70-per-cent public approval rating -- has rested mainly on Russia's
strong economy, which was already rebounding when Mr. Putin took office in
early 2000. If the economy should decline significantly, Mr. Putin might be
in political trouble, which is why he is making such a concerted effort for
Russia's economic integration in the West. Indeed, of all Mr. Putin's goals,
economic success for Russia is by far the most important.
Which brings us back to President Bush's reluctance to push Mr. Putin on
Chechnya and democratic rights in Russia, despite the considerable economic
leverage Mr. Bush brings to the bargaining table.
It may well be that Mr. Bush considers other issues, such as Russia's sale of
nuclear technology and weaponry to Iran, to be more pressing.
It may also be that Mr. Bush is anxious to reach a co-operative agreement
with Russia on ballistic missile defence, or at least to ensure Russia's
quiet acquiescence to U.S. plans. These are issues that the administration
considers vital to America's national security and the war against terrorism.
But Mr. Bush should realize that ending the war in Chechnya, and establishing
solid foundations for democracy in Russia, are equally important to his
country's security. Russia's brutal war in Chechnya encourages terrorism and
threatens the stability of the entire Caucasus. And Mr. Putin's strong-armed
approach to his critics in the media, as well as his continued reliance on
the former KGB, could lead Russia back toward authoritarianism, particularly
if the economy declines. Despite the President's much-lauded new agreement on
reducing nuclear warheads, Russia still has enough weapons to be a danger if
its political leadership is in hostile hands.
Dostoevsky's fiction depicted the dark side of Russia's soul, but the real
life story of Russia's leaders offers a chilling reminder of the country's
strong legacy of authoritarian rule.
********
#13
San Francisco Chronicle
May 21, 2002
Hate crimes going unpunished in Russia
Rights groups urge Bush to speak up
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Moscow -- Braima Sauane has never met President Bush. But if he were to
encounter him this week in Moscow, he would tell the American leader that
stopping to talk to strangers can be very dangerous.
In the nine months Sauane, a native of Guinea-Bissau, has spent in Russia,
young skinheads have attacked and beaten him three times.
Sauane is an engineering student at the Moscow University of Peoples'
Friendship -- founded by the Communists in the 1950s as an outreach gesture
to the Third World. But he has found so little friendship there that he
doesn't linger outside his classroom or his dormitory -- much less talk to
outsiders.
Sauane's story is echoed by many citizens from Russia's southern republics,
as well as Jews, students and tourists of African and Asian descent, and
even foreign diplomats. All have been targets of verbal harassment and
beatings, and some have been killed.
"It is really frightening (to live here)," Sauane said, his eyes cautiously
scanning the street.
Law enforcement officials have repeatedly promised that they would crack
down on racist thugs. Instead, police routinely arrest darker-skinned
people and sometimes beat and torture them while in detention, turning a
blind eye to the skinheads, according to organizations such as Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International.
The extent to which racism permeates law enforcement in Russia is one of
the reasons that human rights groups in Russia and in the United States
want Bush to bring up the issue during his summit with President Vladimir
Putin later this week.
Bush is already planning to visit a synagogue in a tacit show of support
for Russia's maltreated Jewish population. Five synagogues across the
country have been vandalized and one has been set on fire in the past four
weeks.
"We are urging our two presidents to make sure these issues are on the
agenda of the summit," said Micah Naftalin of the Union of Councils of
Soviet Jews, a group based in Washington that monitors the rights of
religious and ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union.
"This is just so important," he said. "There have to be more responses to
these racist attacks. (Putin) has to get more commitment on the part of the
police, the prosecutors, the judges."
Putin condemned racial violence in his annual state of the nation address
last month, declaring, "Gangs of extremists act, in effect, as organized
criminal communities and must be persecuted similarly."
But human rights groups say that Putin must translate words into action.
And at a time when Russia is seeking more acceptance from, and cooperation
with, the West, they hope Bush will strongly urge him to do so.
The scope of victims is much wider than practicing Jews. Visitors from all
over the world get assaulted on the basis of the color of their skin, the
shape of their eyes or the curve of their nose. Last month, an unidentified
band of Moscow skinheads sent threatening e-mail messages to several
embassies -- including the U.S. Embassy -- declaring a "war on foreigners."
Abdulfat Quliev, the Azerbaijani consul, quickly went on television to tell
his fellow Azeris: "Do not go out in the street at night." Gabriel
Kotchofa, president of the Association of Foreign Students, gave foreign
students the same warning.
The British Embassy also recently cautioned visitors from the United
Kingdom about the increased number of hate crimes in Russia. "It's an
ongoing situation, and people need to be aware of it," said embassy
spokesman Richard Turner. "It's something we take very seriously."
Police officials say there are about 10,000 skinheads across Russia, but
human rights groups say their number may be several times higher than that.
No one keeps track of the number of hate crimes committed by extremists.
Last week, a Moscow court released Alexander Ivanov-Sukharevsky, the former
leader of a small nationalist party, after giving him a three-year
suspended sentence for inciting racial and ethnic hatred. Alexander
Tkachev, mayor of the southern town of Krasnodar, has been openly urging
all nonindigenous ethnic minorities -- tens of thousands of Armenians,
Kurds, Georgian Muslims and Assyrians -- to leave his area.
No one in the Kremlin has spoken against Tkachev's demands, and the Kremlin
was similarly mum when copies of an anti-Semitic book by David Duke, the
former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, were offered for sale at bookstalls in
the Russian parliament last year.
In March, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper alleged that Moscow anti-riot
police were training the capital's skinheads.
Police officials roundly denied the allegations and note that they headed
off what skinheads promised would be a weekend of bloodshed to coincide
with Adolf Hitler's April 20 birthday. That week, law enforcement flooded
thousands of officers onto the streets of all major cities.
But they were not able to save Abdul Hakim Hakrid, a 35-year-old Afghan
interpreter for the Russian Interior Ministry's migration service, who was
beaten to death by a group of young ultranationalists in downtown Moscow.
Nor could they prevent the brutal beating of four more Afghans at a Moscow
market or the beating of two Pakistani students in the central town of Tula.
Agrippah Mutambara, the Zimbabwean ambassador, said a young Russian
attacked him outside a supermarket in central Moscow as the shop's security
guards looked on. "They had seen everything but pretended not to notice
it," Mutambara told the Izvestia newspaper.
Last week, Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov denounced "law
enforcement agencies, government bodies and municipal structures (for
neglecting) to prevent the activities of organizations and individuals
spreading the ideas of social, racial, ethnic and religious hatred."
In March, 18 students from Africa, Asia and Latin America left Rostov State
Medical University in southwest Russia, fleeing constant beatings and
insults by local teenagers and indifference by the police, the Chronicle of
Higher Education reported.
*******
#14
slate.com
May 21, 2002
Can George Bush Westernize Russia?
By Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is a journalist based in London and Warsaw.
www.anneapplebaum.com.
During George Bush's visit to Russia this week, he's going to achieve many
things. He's going to put the finishing touches on a new, radically simple
arms reduction agreement apparently only three pages long. He's going to
discuss the final terms of a new NATO-Russian partnership that will be
formally signed in Rome next week. He's going to add some symbolic
flourishes to the new post-9/11 US-Russian anti-terrorist partnership.
Toward that end, he'll probably have his photograph taken, with Laura at
his side, in front of some splendid Czarist facades, while the man the
president allegedly refers to as "Putty-Put" gives the presidential couple
a tour of St. Petersburg, his once-glorious hometown.
The president is also going to give a lot of people a powerful sense of
déjà vu. Memories are short these days, I know, but 1997 wasn't such a very
long time ago. In that year, an equally pro-Russian American president and
an equally pro-Western Russian president also looked in one another's eyes
and also liked what they saw. Having also decided to forge a new
partnership, "based on an enduring political commitment undertaken at the
highest political level," Bill and Boris, predecessors of George and
Vladimir, also signed an agreement on NATO-Russian partnership. Indeed,
looked at in retrospect, the "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation
and Security Between NATO and the Russian Federation" signed in Paris in
May 1997—precisely five years ago, in other words—is an extraordinarily
optimistic document. It speaks of a "historic transformation," of
"strengthening mutual trust and cooperation." It "defines the goals and
mechanisms of consultation, cooperation, joint decision-making and joint
action." Just like this week's US-Russian summit, it also caused many
people to wax eloquent about the "real" end of the Cold War and led many
other people to start wondering whether—or rather when—Russia would join
NATO itself.
Then came Kosovo, Chechnya, and disputes over missile defense. Then came
the expulsion of Russian spies from Washington. At one low point, the
Russian government kicked NATO's representatives out of Moscow too. At
another low point, President Putin took himself off to Shanghai, where he
and his Chinese and Central Asian counterparts seemed intent on forming
some sort of Asian alternative to NATO. What really spoiled the apparently
beautiful US-Russian relationship, however, was not any one event but a
more general problem. Since the early 1990s, American diplomacy in Russia
has attempted to "Westernize" Russia by persuading Russia to join Western
institutions. Just as often, Russia has responded by attempting to
"Russify" those same institutions—or at least to change their rules to suit
itself.
Look, for example, at Russia's troubled membership of the Council of
Europe, a mild-mannered, low-key international organization that promotes
human rights in Europe. After much bitter fighting, the council suspended
Russia's new membership in 2000, alleging that Russian troops had carried
out gross human rights violations in Chechnya. Nine months later, its tail
between its legs, the council rescinded its decision, although nothing much
had changed—in Chechnya or anywhere else. Instead, its leadership simply
gave up trying to get Russia to conform. As one of them put it, the
alternative was to "sit with our arms crossed and do nothing." Expulsion
had no effect—so Russia was allowed to stay, despite flagrant disregard for
both the letter and the spirit of the council's rules.
A similar problem has plagued Russia's membership of the Organization on
Security and Cooperation in Europe, a somewhat less low-key international
organization that monitors various European treaties, has played a large
role in the Balkans, and even helped mediate an end to the first Chechen
War. Like the Council of Europe, the OSCE also has a
human-rights-monitoring mandate, as well as an obligation to end armed
conflicts in Europe. When, at an OSCE summit in Istanbul in 1999, some of
this was pointed out to Boris Yeltsin—who was then once again at war in
Chechnya—he stormed out of the meeting and went home, for all the world
like Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations.
There are other examples too, the most notable being the International
Monetary Fund, which in the 1990s actually invented a new form of
no-strings-attached loan just for Russia in order not to offend Russian
sensibilities. The result—the billions of dollars wasted on an oil-rich,
mineral-rich country that would not help itself—are too well known to dwell
upon. "We are a great country," said Boris Yeltsin at one point, speaking
disdainfully of the IMF's traditional economic requirements, "and you
cannot tell us what to do."
At least until now, this attitude was the core of the problem. The Russian
establishment was willing to join Western clubs—as long Westerners didn't
actually apply all the rules of the clubs, whether economic or political,
to Russia. Russia was simply too great a country to be bound by the human
rights language in the small print of the treaties, too great a country to
be treated like any old banana republic suffering a chronic economic
crisis. No wonder so many Russian-Western, Russian-American, and
Russian-NATO partnerships, initiatives, and projects ended in tears.
Will George Bush's optimistic overture to Vladimir Putin end differently?
It could—but only if Russia itself is willing to change. There are signs
that it might be. In a few weeks last fall, the United States achieved more
in Afghanistan than the Soviet army had achieved over many years, a fact
that has apparently given Russia's military cause to doubt its own status
as a top-ranking global power. There are also signs that it might not be.
More than half of the Russian population still tell opinion pollsters that
NATO is a threat, a figure that hardly bodes well for a new NATO-Russian
partnership, let alone Russia's eventual NATO membership.
There are also signs that the Bush administration is less interested in
getting Russia to play by Western rules—Chechnya has been emphatically
stuffed onto the back burner—which is a mistake. Real Russian-American
partnership, as opposed to easily disregarded friendship treaties and
easily forgotten newspaper photographs, has to be based on some common
values, or at least on some common understanding of what international
organizations are for and why countries choose to join them. More to the
point, this "Westernization," or (less Eurocentrically) "democratization"
of Russia has to come from within the country, not outside it—and we aren't
quite there yet.
*******
#15
St. Petersburg Times
May 21, 2002
A Bureaucracy That Cuts Just One Way
By Vladimir Kovalyev
IT'S hard to believe but, according to state statistics, Russia ends up with
a new civil servant every 18 minutes. As I read this in the Izvestiya daily
the other day, I was reminded of the time I sat down with the figures from
the state budget and worked out that there are about 1.5 million civil
servants - about 10 percent of the country's population and 300,000 more
people than there are serving in the Russian army. It's no wonder they talk
about shrinking the size of the bureaucracy.
This week, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly got into a spat over
raising the salaries of deputies and their assistants. These are determined
on the basis of multiples of the state-set minimum wage, which was raised
from 100 rubles ($3.20) to 300 rubles earlier this year. Sergei Tarasov, the
Legislative Assembly speaker said that there was just no way the budget could
take the tripling of these salaries.
I'm not against giving the deputies a raise - the fact that lawmakers
responsible for the approval of a $1.9-billion city budget are paid $160 per
month strikes me as strange.
But I think that raises for their assistants are an even more important
question. If deputies were allowed to use the salary fund according to their
needs, they would likely pay higher salaries to a smaller number of employees.
But there is little likelihood that this will happen as, although we keep
hearing statements from the federal government that shrinking the bureaucracy
is a serious goal, the results are the opposite. Last week Prime Minister
Mikhail Kasyanov, asked by a State Duma deputy about administrative reform,
replied that people should not expect any radical change but, instead, only
"minor corrections" to the system.
In fact, they are headed the wrong way. The appointment of presidential
representatives - each with their own administrative staffs - to oversee
seven mega-districts in the country just created more seats for bureaucratic
pants to polish.
Novgorod Governor Mikhail Prusak says that the so-called "vertical
integration of state power" system just promotes interference with regional
economies. In a recent interview with Novaya Gazeta, Prusak said that he now
has to call the office of Presidential Representative Viktor Cherkesov just
to get an additional load of sand to build a road in his region. I hope that
Prusak was exaggerating but, even if he was, he's not too far off.
Here's a beautiful example:
Last week I read a report on the Northwest Region that was presented to
German businesspeople by Lyubov Sovershayeva, Cherkesov's deputy.
"[We] conducted an analysis of investment opportunities here with the
participation of experts, businesspeople and representatives of political
parties and public organizations. ... The work development strategies have
allowed us to better estimate the economical, social and human potential [of
the region] ... We believe the North West is very attractive for investments"
Sovershayeva said.
Now, that's informative.
Sovershayeva said the document has been approved as a draft, and is currently
in the process of "being fleshed out."
In other words "We don't have anything to do at the moment, so we have to
pretend." They might as well, since they seem to just pretending to try to
whittle down the civil service anyway.
********
#16
Asia Times
May 21, 2002
Growth figures strong for Russian crime
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - Russian officials have been ordered to make renewed efforts to check
an alarming rise in crime. The crackdown has been ordered by Prosecutor
General Vladimir Ustinov. New policing measures will seek to check murders,
street crime and widespread corruption.
The measures follow strong concern expressed by President Vladimir Putin.
"Murders, kidnappings, assaults and robberies are becoming virtually everyday
occurrences," Putin said at a meeting on crime last week.
Russian police have been asked also to solve more crime cases. Last year
about half the cases of serious crime remained unsolved. More than 3 million
crimes were recorded last year, Ustinov announced last week. Close to 2
million of these were serious crimes and of these about 884,000 remain
unsolved, he said.
In all, 14,848 people were murdered in the whole Soviet Union in 1986,
according to crime figures given by Ustinov. By 1990, 16,122 murders were
recorded in Russia. Last year more than 34,000 murders were recorded.
Besides, about 30,000 people went missing in Russia last year.
The number of murders in Moscow remained high last year, though the capital
has seen worse. There were 1,700 murders, up 21 percent from 2000. In 1994,
at the height of market reforms and property redistribution, 2,863 murders
were registered in Moscow. From the 1960s to the late 1980s, there had been
200-300 murder cases a year in Moscow. Business-related killings now directly
account for almost 20 percent of all murders, Moscow police say. In Soviet
days, they were less than 1 percent of the total.
Not all of the rise in crime is directly related to market reforms, police
say. The collapse of the district police system is behind much of the rise in
crime. In Soviet times, for example, several categories of men and women
released from prison had to report to the district police regularly. But lack
of funding and control means the system no longer works effectively.
Criminality has been growing also within the police. About 16,000
law-enforcement officers were disciplined last year, and 200 were given
prison terms, Ustinov said. At the same time corruption has been growing
within other government agencies. Ustinov says about 25,000 Russian officials
were charged with criminal offenses last year. Of these, 1,326 were sentenced
to imprisonment.
In the face of growing demands for cleaning up government agencies, Ustinov
said he saw no need to carry out a new anti-graft campaign in Russia. He said
a growing number of officials are being prosecuted already for taking bribes.
But Russian authorities are a long way from ending corruption. Chechnya has
become Russia's biggest "black hole". Last year about 711 million rubles
(US$24 million), or 6 percent of the money allocated for the restoration of
Chechnya, was reported to have been "misspent". Interior Minister Boris
Gryzlov says another 567.5 million rubles was stolen in Chechnya last year in
1,147 cases of theft. In an attempt to tackle corruption, funds will now be
transferred only for designated projects, Deputy Economic Development and
Trade Minister Mohammed Tsikanov announced last week.
Officials in Russia are notorious for their thirst for bribes to supplement
their meager official salaries, which average about $100 a month. Prime
Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has signed an order boosting prosecutors' salaries
by 160 percent this year. But this move is seen as hardly sufficient to deal
with widespread corruption among law-enforcement officers.
(Inter Press Service)
********
#17
strana.ru
May 21, 2002
"Protection" in the Shadows - the Workings of Russia's Hidden Economy
Police and the authorities in on the action, says report
By Michael Stedman
One Russian company in three takes refuge under protection rackets - "a new
form of monopolism under the market conditions." The economic rationale of
those doing the protecting "is maintenance of the high level of prices and
profits by limiting the number of participants," research findings declared
in Moscow today (Tuesday.)
Even law-abiding businessmen flee to the gray economy as it represents "the
only way to survive" in the face of excessive taxation. "It is hard to
conceive that enterprises fully complying with all the legal requirements
exist," according to a report published by experts of a policy "think tank"
advising the Russian government on market economics and democratic society.
"Informal" taxes imposed on a portion of profit provide the spoils for
equally "informal groups" running protection rackets in a runaway economy,
splitting specific market sectors among themselves, the researchers found in
findings revealed by the European Union-funded Russian-European Center for
Economic Policy.
But even police are said to be in on the corruption game, selling cover to
more than 36 percent of companies turning to what Russians call "kryshas," or
"roofs" in English, to keep wolves with even-sharper fangs clear of the door.
The "authorities" want their share of the action, too, mopping up 35 percent
of "krysha" trade, according to the research.
The findings reported to a news briefing today were part of a study by
specialists from St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance
into wide-ranging elements of Russia's shadow economy, research founded on
unrecorded transactions "understood as a financial/business transaction that
cannot be disclosed through direct auditing."
Officials of tax and financial authorities joined company accountants in an
anonymous baring of souls and books to inquirers who found that in the
northern capital, St. Petersburg, every single company seemed locked into tax
evasion. Nearly half of business was at it nationwide, the authors said.
Avoiding taxation was a big temptation, they noted. But shadow incomes for
increasing personal gain gave the problem "a moral dimension."
"Uncontrolled processes, in particular those related to profit distribution,
pose a serious threat to society and require considerable resources to
combat," the report said.
An even more focused accompanying analysis of affairs in Russia's isolated
western enclave of Kaliningrad offers deeper-still evidence of how far crime
and the gray economy is part of society's fabric.
Drug production and trafficking were found to account for between 34 percent
and 36 percent of the region's shadow economy, the analysis revealed.
Smuggling amounted to between 21 percent and 26 percent, prostitution between
18 percent and 20 percent, and illegal production and sale of "fire, gas and
cold arms" contributed to between 10 percent and 15 percent. These all had
the largest share of the gray market.
According to "a sufficiently-concerted" opinion of experts conducting the
study, the average volume of shadow activity was about 90 percent of official
gross regional product, they said.
Analysis showed glaring inconsistencies in data tracking economic activity in
a region giving rise to serious security concerns for the European Union,
pondering having Kaliningrad locked inside community borders when region
neighbors Poland and Lithuania become members.
For while official statistics showed the enclave's standard of living was 1.4
times lower than the Russian average, contrasting - but also official -
figures showed there were 300,000 cars in a population of just some 950,000,
the report showed.
Further food for thought - 1,655 joint ventures and more than 6,000 small
businesses were said to have been established in a region reporting economic
growth of 12 percent and investment growth of 31 percent.
Gross regional product indicators showed a positive upward trend reaching 17
percent in 2007, compared with an average value of 11 percent now.
"Conspicuous discrepancy" indicated the existence of a well-developed shadow
economy, the report said.
*******
#18
Excerpt
US Department of State
Patterns of Global Terrorism-2001
Eurasia Overview
"Together, the United States and GUUAM will work to bring the perpetrators
of the September 11 attack to justice and to fight terrorism. This conflict
is a struggle to defend values common to Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Joint statement by the United States and the Foreign Ministers of GUUAM
(Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova)
14 November 2001
No major terrorist attacks occurred in Eurasia in 2001. The region,
however, which has suffered for years from Afghanistan-based extremism,
provided integral support to the international Coalition against terrorism.
States in the region provided overflight and temporary basing rights,
shared law-enforcement and intelligence information, and moved aggressively
to identify, monitor, and apprehend al-Qaida members and other terrorists.
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, governments also took swift
action to enhance security at US embassies and other key facilities against
terrorist attacks. Countries in the region also took diplomatic and
political steps to contribute to the international struggle against
terrorism, such as becoming party to the 12 United Nations conventions
against terrorism. The signatories to the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) Collective Security Treaty (CST) called for increased security
along the borders of the member states, tighter passport and visa controls,
increased involvement of law-enforcement agencies, and the reinforcement of
military units. In addition, the CST Security Council planned to strengthen
the year-old CIS antiterrorist center.
Enhancing regional counterterrorism cooperation has been a critical
priority for the United States. Toward that end, the US Department of State
Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism held the second annual
Central Asia Counterterrorism Conference in Istanbul in June.
Counterterrorism officials from four Central Asian countries, as well as
Russia, Canada, Egypt, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, explored topics such
as human rights, the rule of law, and combating terrorist financing.
Throughout the conference, and in other bilateral and multilateral fora,
the United States has consistently stressed that effective counterterrorism
is impossible without respect for human rights and that the rule of law is
a formidable and essential weapon in the fight against al-Qaida and other
international terrorist organizations. A policy exercise held on the last
day of the conference helped reinforce key tenets of effective
counterterrorism policy and operations, including the need for sustained,
high-level official attention, regional cooperation, and the importance of
contingency planning for terrorist incident management and response. (The
next Conference is planned for 24-26 June 2002, in Ankara.)
In December, Kyrgyzstan hosted the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Bishkek International Conference on Enhancing
Security in Central Asia: Strengthening Efforts to Counter Terrorism. The
Conference was attended by over 300 high-level participants from over 60
countries and organizations. The Conference concluded that the countries of
Central Asia play a critical role in preventing terrorism; enhanced
regional cooperation is needed; and terrorism cannot be combated through
law enforcement only—social and economic roots of discord also must be
addressed and rule of law strengthened. Delegations endorsed a program of
action that emphasizes the need for increased coordination and interagency
cooperation as well as the need to take steps to prevent illegal activities
of persons, groups, or organizations that instigate terrorist acts.
Countries within the region have been taking steps to enhance their common
efforts against international terrorism. Fears of an influx of Afghan
fighters and refugees as a result of the fighting in Afghanistan spurred
cooperative efforts to tighten border security and to combat extremist
organizations. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a group on the US
FTO list that seeks to overthrow the Uzbek Government and create an Islamic
state, continued to be a concern. Unlike 1999 and 2000, an anticipated
large-scale IMU offensive failed to materialize in 2001, most likely
because of better host-government military preparedness and the IMU’s
participation in the Taliban’s summer offensive against the Northern
Alliance. There were, however, incidents against local security forces that
never were definitively linked to the group. IMU members fought alongside
the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001. A large number of IMU
fighters, reportedly including their military leader Namangani, were killed
at the Kondoz battle in November 2001. The United States and regional
governments also continued to monitor the Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic
political movement that advocates the practice of pure Islamic doctrine and
the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia. Despite regional
governments’ claims, the United States has not found clear links between
Hizb ut-Tahrir and terrorist activities. The Eurasian countries also
recognized the growing links between terrorism and other criminal
enterprises and have taken steps to break the nexus among terrorism,
organized crime, trafficking in persons and drugs, and other illicit
activities.
Five years after it began meeting as a body to discuss border disputes with
China, the Shanghai Forum—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, and
China—admitted Uzbekistan as a sixth member in June, renamed itself the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and continued its focus on
regional security. Earlier in the year the group laid the groundwork for a
counterterrorist center in the Kyrgyzstani capital of Bishkek. Members also
signed an agreement at their June summit to cooperate against "terrorism,
ethnic separatism, and religious extremism."
Three Central Asian states—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—along
with Russia, Belarus, and Armenia, agreed at a CIS collective-security
summit in May to create a rapid-reaction force to respond to regional
threats, including terrorism and Islamic extremism. The headquarters of the
force is to be based in Bishkek. Each of the three Central Asian states and
Russia agreed to train a battalion that, if requested by a member state,
would deploy to meet regional threats. The security chiefs of these states
also met in Dushanbe in October to discuss strengthening border security.
Several Central Asian states concluded counterterrorism or border security
agreements in 2001. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed to speed up the
exchange of information between their frontier forces, and Kazakhstan
signed an agreement with Turkmenistan on border security in July.
Continuing past cooperation, in December, Kyrgyzstan and Russia signed an
agreement to exchange counterterrorism information. In the summer, the
Kyrgyzstani parliament refused to ratify a border accord with Uzbekistan
against international terrorism, citing, among other reasons, Uzbekistan’s
decision unilaterally to mine its border with Kyrgyzstan in the fall of
2000. The Uzbek mines on the undemarcated Kyrgyzstani border have been
blamed for at least two dozen civilian deaths. The Uzbeks also unilaterally
have mined the undemarcated border with Tajikistan, resulting in deaths as
well....
Russia
Following the terrorist crimes of September 11, counterterrorism
cooperation between the United States and Russia grew to unprecedented and
invaluable levels in multiple areas—political, economic, law enforcement,
intelligence, and military. Areas of common interest ranged from sharing
financial intelligence to identifying and blocking terrorist assets to
agreements on overflights by US military aircraft involved in Operation
Enduring Freedom (OEF). The Russians offered search-and-rescue assistance
in support of the OEF efforts in Afghanistan. Both countries have
underscored the value of their extensive exchange of counterterrorism
information and their enhanced ability to collect and exploit threat
information. A mutual interest in fighting criminal activities that support
or facilitate terrorism resulted in better-coordinated approaches to border
control, counternarcotics efforts, and immigration controls in Central Asia.
Much of the collaboration was through multilateral fora—such as the UN, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Group of
Eight (G-8)—and international efforts as part of the Coalition against
terrorism with global reach. The United States-Russia Working Group on
Afghanistan was the central bilateral forum for addressing terrorism and
terrorism-related issues, including terrorist financing, chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism, and the nexus
between terrorism, drug trafficking, and other criminal activity.
On 24 September, President Putin publicly laid out a broad program of
cooperation with, and support for, US counterterrorism efforts. In early
October, Russian Defense Minister Ivanov stated that Russia supports any
efforts designed to end international terrorism. In mid-October, the
Justice Ministry amended terrorism laws to include penalties for legal
entities that finance terrorist activity.
Russia was the site of a number of terrorist events in 2001, many connected
to the ongoing insurgency and instability in Chechnya. The current
conflict, which began in late summer 1999, has been characterized by
widespread destruction, displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians,
and accusations of human-rights abuses by Russian servicemen and various
rebel factions. One rebel faction, which consists of both Chechen and
foreign—predominantly Arabic—mujahidin fighters, is connected to
international Islamic terrorists and has used terrorist methods. Russian
forces continue to conduct operations against Chechen fighters but also
draw heavy criticism from human-rights groups over credible reports of
human-rights violations. On 9 January, US aid worker Kenneth Gluck was
kidnapped while traveling in Chechnya; he was released on 6 February. The
kidnapping was attributed to an Arab mujahidin commander. Chechen guerrilla
leader Shamil Basayev, however, accepted overall responsibility and
apologized, saying it was a "misunderstanding."
Russia also has experienced numerous other kidnappings, bombings, and
assassinations, which may be attributed to either terrorists or criminals.
On 5 February a bomb exploded in Moscow’s Byelorusskaya metro station
wounding nine persons. On 15 March three Chechen men armed with knives
commandeered a Russian charter flight soon after it departed Istanbul for
Moscow, demanding that the pilots divert the plane to an Islamic country.
Saudi special forces stormed the plane upon its arrival in the country,
arresting two of the hijackers, while the third hijacker, one crewmember,
and one passenger were killed during the rescue. On 24 March three car
bombs exploded in Stavropol, one in a busy market and two in front of
police stations, killing at least 20 persons and wounding almost 100. In
December, a Russian court sentenced five persons to prison terms ranging
from nine to 15 years for involvement in two apartment bombings in 1999 in
Moscow that killed more than 200 persons.
********
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With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and
the MacArthur Foundation
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