Johnson's Russia List
#6570
25 November 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. AP: Putin Hails Results of Bush Meeting.
2. Parlamentskaya Gazeta: Vitaly Gan, POSTSCRIPT TO PUTIN-BUSH MEETING.
3. Moscow Times: Lilia Shevtsova, Onward -- and Westward?
4. Luba Schwartzman: TV1 Review.
5. Wall Street Journal: Willem Buiter, Don't Let Success Breed Complacency.
(re economies)
6. Itogi: Nils Iohansen, ROBBED BY EUROPE? Expansion of the EU at the
expense
of countries of the former socialist camp will cause damages to Russia.
7. Moscow Times: Natalia Yefimova, Experts: Reform Has Done Little for
Courts.
8. Chicago Tribune: Alex Rodriguez, Activists say Russia trying to hide
graves. Searchers seek Stalin's victims.
9. Reuters: Russia says NATO will support it on Chechen threat.
10. Los Angeles Times: Anna Politkovskaya, Caucasus Conundrum. As the
people
worry, Putin thrives on war.
11. Reuters Foundation Alertnet: Mariano Aguirre, Two sides need to talk
about Chechnya.
12. Yezhenedelny Zhurnal: Mikhail Fishman, PEACE PROCESS PARTICIPANTS.
Stopping abuses by the federal forces in Chechnya is the only solution.
13. Montreal Gazette: Fred Weir, U.S.S.R.'s old arms may have new use:
U.S., Ukraine in dispute over sold radar system.
14. The Taipei Times: Cao Chang-Ching, Russia is showing China how to break
away from the past. Both have had their fling with communism but only
Russia has
moved on and is now setting an example that China must follow if it wants
to play
a central role in shaping the future of the world.]
*******
#1
Putin Hails Results of Bush Meeting
November 25, 2002
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin opened a Cabinet meeting
Monday with praise for his recent meeting with President Bush.
Putin said he ``highly'' estimated the meeting Friday at the 18th-century
czarist palace in Pushkin, near Russia's former imperial capital, St.
Petersburg.
In remarks broadcast on Russian television, Putin said that he and Bush had
coordinated their approaches ``to key bilateral issues and our cooperation
on the international arena.'' He said the talks were ``very frank.''
Bush's three-hour stop in Russia was seen as his way of thanking Putin for
supporting a United Nations resolution requiring Iraq to disarm.
Bush also wanted to reassure Russia that NATO's decision to expand into the
former Soviet bloc - including its membership invitation to the three
former Soviet republics in the Baltics - would not threaten Moscow's security.
The daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta commented Monday that ``Washington considers
Russia a priority in its global policy.''
``Neither NATO, nor the European Union has such international authority and
geopolitical opportunities as Russia ... and this is why the sole
superpower needs it,'' it said.
*******
#2
Parlamentskaya Gazeta
No. 224
November 2002
POSTSCRIPT TO PUTIN-BUSH MEETING
By Vitaly GAN
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
It will take experts a great deal of time yet to properly
evaluate the contents of the Russo-American meeting in Pushkin
outside St. Petersburg. Putin and Bush certainly had many
things to discuss. More problems were added to the unresolved
issues of bilateral relations since the May visit of President
Bush to Moscow. It is reported that the presidents discussed
the three key issues: Iraq, Chechnya and the apparently
"mechanical" eastward enlargement of NATO.
The sides' attitude to these problems is well known. Both
are for joining hands in the struggle against terror but differ
on the methods and accents. The USA had been ready to the last
day, at least in word, to launch a unilateral military action
against Saddam Hussein, while Russia openly rejected the policy
of aggression against a sovereign state.
Acting jointly with France and China, Russia calmed down
the interventionist fervour of the USA and facilitated the
adoption of the Security Council resolution that at least put
off the threat of the US invasion of Iraq. It is not only that
the use of military force to resolve disputes is unacceptable
in the 21st century. Russia - and this is not a secret - also
has legitimate economic interests, which would be dramatically
undermined in the case of war.
Judging by the statements of a high-ranking member of the
US administration, during his meeting with President Putin
George Bush, who recognises these interests, spotlighted the
discussion of variants of joint action that would ensure the
implementation of the Security Council resolution.
Moscow is not alone to have doubts concerning secret US
plans. It is reported from Prague, which hosted a NATO summit
from which George Bush came to Russia, many US allies also
question the sincerity of the White House. Although they
pledged assistance to their overseas partner, they clearly
stated - and this concerns above all Germany and France - that
they would not approve of any unilateral action by the USA.
The issue of the Chechen conflict is closely associated
with the issue of the struggle against international terrorism.
The US stand on the matter slightly changed and these changes
became more apparent after Chechen terrorists took hostages in
the theatre centre in Moscow.
At the same time, observers noted persistently equivocal
US attitude to the Chechen problem. The White House certainly
refutes this but, while approving of Moscow's resolve to repel
the terrorists, it also presents the matter as if the Kremlin
does not want a political settlement.
Vladimir Putin and George Bush discussed the Prague NATO
summit but their attitude to its results cannot be described as
sensational. Expressing his attitude to the invitation of seven
ex-socialist countries, including Latvia, Estonia and
Lithuania, to join NATO, President Bush extolled the
"transformation of NATO." To believe him, the new NATO in no
way threatens Russia and is not spearheaded against it.
Nobody in Russia is dramatising the situation and it would
be naive to think that Moscow can blockade NATO processes. But
Moscow will nevertheless react - although it is not clear how
it will so far - to the advance of NATO close to its borders.
Moscow cannot be happy with persistent "rudiments" in
Russo-American relations, above all in disarmament, trade and
economy. The USA has not yet fulfilled its pledge to cancel the
notorious Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which is discriminating
against Russia in the sphere of trade. Another problem is the
new unprecedented treaty on the mutual reduction of nuclear
armaments to one-third of their present number, signed in May
this year.
The treaty got stuck in the Senate, where it was submitted for
ratification last summer, largely because of the election
campaign in the USA. The White House pledged to ensure the
unimpeded movement of the treaty through the upper house and it
may be able to fulfil this pledge now that the Republicans have
assumed control of the Senate as the result of by-elections.
-
******
#3
Moscow Times
November 25, 2002
Onward -- and Westward?
By Lilia Shevtsova
Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate of the Moscow center of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, contributed this comment to The Moscow
Times.
As the autumn political season draws to a close, it is a good time to take
stock of the pro-Western shift effected so unexpectedly and so brilliantly
by President Vladimir Putin in September 2001. Without hesitation and -- no
less importantly -- without the demand for "deliverables" common in Russian
diplomacy, Putin performed a foreign policy revolution: For the first time
ever, he made Russia a member of a Western coalition, without aspiring to
play the dominant role, and allowed a Western power to have a military
presence in Russia's geopolitical sphere of influence. His subsequent
actions demonstrate that he has abandoned the doctrine of multi-polarity,
which made it possible for Russia to preserve the outward appearance of
being a great power.
The Kremlin under Putin has shown that its approach to diplomacy is based
on pragmatism. The events of the past few weeks -- Moscow's agreement,
albeit grudgingly, with the European Union on the Kaliningrad visa issue;
Russian support for UN Security Council Resolution 1441; and the Kremlin's
calm reaction to the inclusion of the Baltic states in NATO -- prove that
Russia remains within the bounds of the existential choice made by Putin in
favor of the West.
However, other recent events also demonstrate that Moscow has failed to
seize the chance to consolidate its pro-Western orientation. Putin's turn
to the West is seriously undermined by the lack of national consensus on
key issues of foreign policy strategy, by openly anti-Western sentiments
within the ruling class and particularly among the foreign policy and
defense community, and most importantly by the direction of domestic policy
in Russia.
Essentially, Putin's foreign policy doctrine has two main components: a
striving to use Western sources to modernize Russia and the existence of
international terrorism as the main foreign policy challenge. The first
provided the basis for far-reaching efforts by Moscow to further integrate
itself into the global economy. Paradoxically, international terrorism both
provided a major stimulus for Putin's pro-Western shift and also confirmed
the Kremlin's still Soviet mentality, in which rooting out "the enemy" was
always the main factor driving policy.
The fact is that Russia's participation in the coalition against terrorism
is prolonging the life of the traditional Russian system, based on top-down
modernization, authoritarianism and a penchant for using force to resolve
problems. Despite its westward shift, Russia remains a country with a
domestic system that is alien to the West, and in which the state and its
prestige is still more important than the freedom of the individual.
The West has closed its eyes to the dichotomy that exists, in which Moscow
pursues pro-Western policies externally, while internally pursuing
traditional policies. Presumably the West doesn't want to undermine Putin's
position, or seeks to preserve the anti-terrorist coalition, or doesn't
believe that broad democratization is possible in Russia. In Russia itself,
the combination is considered by many to be a perfectly good formula for
development.
However, the October hostage crisis in Moscow and the way in which the
authorities handled the crisis came as a shock to Western public opinion
and made Chechnya the criterion by which the West today measures the extent
of liberal democratic transformation in Russia. For the first time,
Russia's pro-Western course is dependent on the Kremlin's domestic
political course.
A year ago during his visit to Berlin, Putin was greeted in the German
Bundestag with a thunderous ovation. The ovation showed trust in a leader
who, it seemed, had definitively turned Russia to the West. The muted
reception that Putin received in European capitals earlier this month
indicates that Europe has doubts about Moscow's pro-Western orientation
while it continues to play by the old rules of the game at home.
But not that long ago, it seemed that the Kremlin could ignore Europe's
hypersensitivity. Moscow gives priority to its relations with the United
States, on the basis of which it builds its foreign policy and can feel
like a superpower.
It appeared that the cooling of relations between Washington and Europe,
and the conflicts between Western allies on key issues of the new world
order -- particularly regarding terrorism -- might make it possible for
Moscow to become the United States' main partner in the anti-terrorist
coalition. Journalists have already started writing about the
"Washington-Moscow axis." U.S. President George W. Bush, as if to confirm
the special relationship with Moscow, clearly has not wanted to upset his
friend Vladimir and has tried to tread as softly as possible on sensitive
issues for Putin.
So, we have a paradoxical situation: Relations with the EU, in which Moscow
has a multitude of common economic interests, have progressed less than
relations with the United States, with which Russia does not have a serious
economic partnership. The main upshot of Putin's pro-Western shift has been
Russia's cooperation with the West on security issues, but not on economic
issues necessary for Russia's modernization.
Bush's trip to Russia last Friday and the agenda of his meeting with Putin
in Tsarskoye Selo confirmed that Washington wishes to keep Russia as a very
important partner in the anti-terrorism coalition. However, this summit
couldn't compensate for the failures of Putin's European tour. In
conversations with Bush, the Chechen question could not be avoided and it
seems that Putin failed to persuade Bush that Chechnya is nothing other
than a link in the chain of international terrorism. Washington made it
clear that Chechnya is Russia's domestic problem but that it hoped a
peaceful solution could be found.
Moscow drove itself into a corner in its attempts to prove the
international dimension of the Chechen problem. If the events in Chechnya
have international roots, then the West is right to propose an
"international formula" for resolving the conflict. In this context, NATO
General Secretary George Robertson's statement that "Russia can count on
NATO support in the fight against terrorism" can be interpreted as NATO's
willingness to help fight terrorism in Chechnya. It is unlikely, though,
that the Kremlin is ready for such a turn of events.
Nonetheless, growing concern on the part of European states that the
Chechen war could provoke a new round of terrorism, in particular targeting
Russian nuclear facilities -- which could pose a threat not only to Russia
but also to European security -- means that Chechnya will remain firmly on
the international community's radar screen. And that means that a problem
has arisen in relations between Moscow and the West that will complicate
Russia's integration with the West.
The next round of national elections is fast approaching. The president and
the ruling class face a problem: Should they again campaign with slogans
about law, order and stability as they did in 1999-2000, or with the idea
of radical transformation of the political system and moving away from the
traditional inclination to resolve problems by force? How the Kremlin
resolves this question will determine the content and extent of Russia's
pro-Western orientation. However, both in Russia and the West there is a
growing understanding that Russia's integration with the West cannot be
achieved only on the basis of certain shared security interests.
Integration requires a shared system of values that, among other things,
will enable a common understanding of the sources of terrorism.
******
#4
TV1 Review
www.1tv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba_sch@hotmail.com)
Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information, Moscow office
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS
Saturday, November 23, 2002
- The winners of Moscow’s 12th International Advertisement Festival were
awarded at the International Trade Center. Over 2000 commercials had been
submitted in the competition.
- An operation to save bears from poachers is underway in the Kuzbass.
- The Tulun trawler, which was seized in the Sea of Japan, has returned to
Vladivostok.
- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told Channel One that Moscow has
noted the need for transformation expressed by NATO’s decisions. “We have
been assured by the NATO leadership, the President of the US, and the
leaders of other NATO-member countries, that NATO will not stand in the way
of security interests.”
- The Russian Defense Ministry celebrated its 200th anniversary. The
leaders of the Armed Forces held a press conference for Channel One
journalists. The two sides discussed future cooperation aimed at getting
interesting and timely information about the army.
- The Togliatti Dialogue 2002 forum continues in Togliatti. Its
participants are discussing the challenges facing local government and the
role of public organizations in the political life of the region, as well as
the participation of Russian business in governmental social projects.
- Three Chechens who were detained on Friday in connection with the events
in the Dubrovka theater on 23-26 October will remain in prison for 10 days
as investigation work continues.
- The first meeting of the Chechen government under Mikhail Babich was held
in Grozny. The new Prime Minister described his plans for the Cabinet and
for other government structures.
- The world’s oldest samovars are on exhibit in a Yekaterinburg museum.
- The Russian Murman trawler moored on the rocks on Norway’s shore.
- The Finance Ministers and Central Bank Chairmen of the Group of 20 nations
met in Deli.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting on Russia’s domestic
and foreign policy. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Security Council
Chairman Vladimir Rushailo, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov, FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev and Interior Minister Boris
Gryzlov were in attendance.
- President Putin met with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan at the
Kremlin today.
- The Council of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Treaty Organization
member-nations met in Moscow. The foreign ministers of Russia, China,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed a provisional
scheme for cooperation with other countries and international organizations.
- Renowned British conductor Roger Norrington is on tour in Moscow.
- The presidential plenipotentiaries to the federal districts met in
Novosibirsk to discuss the results of their work and their immediate goals.
Head of the Presidential Administration Aleksandr Voloshin also attended the
meeting.
Sunday, November 24, 2002
- Moscow’s 22nd International VGIK Film Festival is drawing to a close.
- An object that looks like a bomb was found in the Miliutin Garden in
Moscow’s northeastern region. The garden has been cordoned off by the police
and an investigation is underway.
- The FSB will not initiate a criminal case against the Baikal Ecological
Wave organization. The “greens” of the Irkutsk Oblast published information
that constituted a state secret. The persons who passed the secret maps to
the organization will, however, be held responsible.
- Three other members of the Chechen terrorist network were detained in
Moscow and the Moscow region.
- Irina Lobacheva and Ilya Averbukh took the Grand Prix at the International
Figure Skating Championship.
- A campaign of flu shots began in the Russian regions.
- Aleksandr Povetkin, from the city of Chekhov, became Russia’s Boxing
Champion.
- Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov announced that Russia is interested in
developing the positive potential in relations with China.
*******
#5
Wall Street Journal
November 25, 2002
Don't Let Success Breed Complacency
By WILLEM BUITER
Mr. Buiter is chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development.
For the second year in a row, the economies of Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union are outperforming the European Union -- and indeed, on
average, the rest of the world. Every one of the countries is growing. Most
enjoy well-rooted macroeconomic stability. Many see their capital inflows
increasing.
After a decade of often painful transition, the benefits of market reform
couldn't be more clear. The EU candidate countries will be crowned for
their efforts at next month's Copenhagen summit, when they are officially
invited to join. In southeastern Europe and the former Soviet states too,
political and regional stability, combined with sustained reforms, is
drawing investors. Moscow has been the world's top-performing stock market
for the past two years. Indeed transition laggards such as Yugoslavia,
Albania and Bulgaria are starting to catch up with the frontrunners --
though the gap remains wide and indeed not all the frontrunners are
performing to capacity.
But where these countries go from here is not so clear. It is evident that
the region is not immune to global developments, and is slowing down. The
question for both the accession countries and those outside is whether they
can keep it up.
The reasons for emerging Europe's above-average growth -- and how it might
be sustained -- are clear. Long-term investment, especially foreign direct
investment, has flowed fastest where structural and institutional reforms
are most advanced; that is, to the EU candidate countries, where structural
and institutional reforms have been deepest. Price liberalization,
privatization and macroeconomic stabilization alone are not sufficient to
keep a country on the path to prosperity.
Nor do macroeconomic measures ensure that the growth process is inclusive,
and that those who lose out in the reforms are properly protected and
assisted. The approach to reform adopted in the process of EU accession has
served the EU candidates well, and is now being embraced by southeastern
Europe. In particular, the requirement to adopt the body of EU law and
regulations, together with the need to boost the competitiveness of local
companies as they enter the single European market, has helped sustain the
drive to reduce bureaucracy, streamline taxation and improve access to
infrastructure and finance.
Many countries in Central Europe and the Baltics now face serious fiscal
policy challenges. Most of the accession candidates have levels of public
spending that are significantly higher than those found in other emerging
markets with comparable per-capita incomes. All the more reason for policy
makers in the region to use expected improvements in the global and
regional economy to achieve overdue reductions in the size of structural
government budget deficits. The demographics -- already-grey populations
aging further -- also point to the need for current spending restraint.
Without such changes, the improvements seen in countries such as Bulgaria
and Romania , and in many CIS countries will not sustain appropriate levels
of growth. In Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the strength of the recovery
is fading as their exchange rates appreciate in real terms, crimping
competitiveness. Oil and gas exporters remain vulnerable to volatile world
prices.
How Russia in particular meets these challenges will have implications for
the region as a whole. According to our transition indicators, among the 27
countries in our region, Russia achieved, after Yugoslavia, the most
significant progress in economic reform during the past year. Spanning two
continents, 11 time zones and a multitude of cultures and ethnic
identities, the task for Russia remains formidable. There is an urgent need
to diversify the economy away from excessive dependence on oil and gas, and
to attract investment into manufacturing and services. At the same time,
strengthening of the rule of law by promoting an impartial and effective
judiciary, independent of the executive branch of government, must be a
priority. So too with measures to enhance political competition independent
media and human rights. Successful economic transition and political
pluralism go hand-in-hand.
The prospects for the region have clearly brightened. But the current
period of relatively resilient growth should not give rise to complacency.
There are both pressing short-term challenges to be addressed, to maintain
macroeconomic and financial stability in the face of a still-moribund
global economy, and longer term challenges to build sound market institutions.
********
#6
Itogi
November 19, 2002
ROBBED BY EUROPE?
Expansion of the EU at the expense of countries of the former
socialist camp will cause damages to Russia
Author: Nils Iohansen
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
MANY RUSSIAN EXPERTS CONSIDER THAT EU EXPANSION VIA TEN COUNTRIES OF
EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE BALTIC STATES WILL HAVE MANY DISADVANTAGES
FOR RUSSIA. HOWEVER, SOME SAY THE ADVANTAGES MAY WELL PREVAIL OVER THE
DISADVANTAGES IF RUSSIA CONTINUES ITS STRUCTURAL ECONOMIC REFORMS.
In a little more than a year, the EU will accept ten new members.
Most of them will be some former Soviet republics and former countries
of the socialist camp. After the acceptance, the countries will have
to say goodbye to remains of their socialist past in their economy.
The changes will concern customs policies, the order of certification
of goods, and rules of export and import operations. These changes
will also affect Russia's economy, since Russia has been closely
connected with these countries since the Soviet era. For instance,
Russia's trade turnover with Poland was $5.5 billion, with Hungary -
$2.84 billion, with the Czech Republic - $2.3 billion, and the trade
turnover with Lithuania totaled nearly $2 billion. Beginning from
January 1, 2004, Russia will have to cooperate with its old partners
by principally new rules. Some experts fear that these rules may be
disadvantageous for Russia. The Russian Ministry for Economic
Development and Trade (MEDT) has conducted a survey on this topic. Its
results were not rejoicing. Deputy Economy Minister Maxim Medvedkov
has announced, "We'll face great problems because countries entering
the EU will have to adopt import duties of the EU. Now import duties
of the Baltic States and the countries of Eastern and Central Europe
are lower than those of the EU, and so Russia will be at a loss after
these countries ate accepted to the EU. The losses may amount to about
$200 million a year." The losses include those of Russian exporters,
since because of the increase of import duties their goods will become
more expensive and consequently less competitive. The branches that
will suffer from these changes worst of all are metallurgy and
agriculture. The transportation branch will considerably suffer too.
The fuel and energy sector will suffer losses too, but to the lesser
extent. Medvedkov has also said that the newcomers will be included by
the EU program of assistance to agriculture. As a result, their
agricultural products will become more competitive. In other words,
the import of cheap food from Poland and the Baltic States will
increase, and the Russian government will have to do something about
it.
The metals sector will have an export problem. New members of the
EU will have to impose the same anti-dumping duties on Russian steel
as other EU countries and include their extent of steel imports in the
uniform quota for the EU. Non-ferrous metals, machine building, and
production of mineral fertilizers will suffer too. However, Richard
Wright, head of the Moscow office of the European Commission, says
that only 12 anti-dumping measures are applied against Russia today,
and five of them do not actually work in practice. According to
Wright, only 1.3% of Russia's export to the US are affected by anti-
dumping measures. He has also stated that the fact that Brussels
recently acknowledged the status of Russia's economy as a market
economy is opening new prospects for mutual trade between Russia and
the EU.
At the same time, the EU has uniform and rather strict rules of
certification of goods. Nobody intends to make exceptions for Russia
in this field. In the opinion of Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee
for Budget and Taxes Mikhail Zadornov, this will considerably
complicate the work of Russian companies unless they modernize their
fleets of vehicles. In other words, ten more countries will be closed
for Russian Il and Tu planes and KamAZ and ZiL trucks.
It is forecast that expansion of the EU can harm Russia's export
of energy carriers too. According to regulations of the EU, not a
single EU country can depend on one single deliverer by more than 30%.
However, this regulation is mostly neglected today: Russia provides
Germany with one-third of its gas and one-fourth of its oil. But this
measure is likely to start working in a few years, and Russia is
worried about it, since it may lose part of its markets in EU
countries. However, the MEDT is more optimistic. Medvedkov has
announced, "Recently we were verbally assured by the cooperation
commission that this principle will not lead to an artificial
reduction of our deliveries."
Indeed, the reality shows that liberalization of the gas market
is not such a simple idea as it used to seem to officials of the
European Commission. There are hundreds of deliverers on the EU market
of electric energy. However, on the gas market only three large
exporters are dominating: Russia, the Netherlands, and Norway. Manager
of Bayergas Ulrich Messner believes that liberalization of the gas
market will lead to reduction of prices: this has happened in United
Europe with electricity. According to Messner, the competition will
hurt not deliverers (among which the main company is Gazprom) but
companies specializing in distribution of gas. Hopes of gas consumers
in Europe have been connected with British deliverers: they were to
enhance the competition. However, this will hardly happen, since
abilities of British gas deliverers are scarcely enough to provide the
domestic market of the UK with gas. Moreover, the UK may even start
importing gas in a few years.
The MEDT is also optimistic about the situation surrounding
Russia's deliveries of nuclear fuel to Europe. However, there are only
promises in this sphere. Recently, Russia received a refusal to
prolong a contract on deliveries of nuclear materials to Hungary. On
the whole, the European nuclear program is aimed at usage of its own
fuel, and there is no room for Russia in it. It is also not ruled out
that Europe may be willing to cooperate with Russia in the nuclear
field only on one issue: utilization of waste nuclear fuel.
Thus, it is not ruled out that Russian entrepreneurs will lose
part of their trade partners in the Baltic States and Central and
Eastern Europe. However, Medvedkov highlights some positive outcomes
of this event for Russia's economy. First, those countries that will
retain their market in the new countries of the EU, will automatically
get an access the whole of Europe. Medvedkov has not cited any
concrete proofs of this statement referring to the difficulty of
calculations. However, he believes that Russia's advantages from the
acceptance of the aforementioned countries to the EU will be much
larger than the $200 million of its annual losses.
The expansion of the EU may also influence the negotiations on
Russia's entering the World Trade Organization (WTO). The new EU
members will get an opportunity to participate in determining the
policy of the WTO. As is known, Russia has certain problems with its
entering the WTO: the organization proposes conditions for Russia's
entering it that do not suit Moscow. To all appearances, after the
aforementioned countries are included in the EU, Russia's negotiations
with the WTO will become even more complicated. In the opinion of Duma
deputy Alexander Shokhin, new members of the EU will protect their
trade interests also within the framework of the WTO.
The use of the WTO membership for Russia is still disputable.
However, in connection with the expansion of the EU, WTO membership
would have come in handy for Russia. The MEDT is sure that Russia
could count for a compensation for the $200 million as reduction of
duties for goods that are the most essential for Russia.
In any case, after the expansion of the EU to the East the Old
World will remain the largest economic and trade partner for Russia.
Oil and gas pipelines are stretched from Russia to Europe but not the
US. As for industrial equipment construction, an excessively important
field for modernization of Russian industry, the world leader in this
sphere is Germany. The number of advantages of the EU expansion for
Russia may well prevail over the disadvantages if Russia continues its
structural economic reforms.
(Translated by Kirill Frolov)
******
#7
Moscow Times
November 25, 2002
Experts: Reform Has Done Little for Courts
By Natalia Yefimova
Staff Writer
About a year after President Vladimir Putin's push for sweeping judicial
reform, legal experts argued that the overhaul has allowed for progress in
individual cases but has failed thus far to improve the court system as a
whole.
"Justice can be an individual affair, but it has not become an affair of
the state," Sergei Pashin, a former judge and veteran court reformer, said
at a round table on judicial reform Friday.
Sergei Vitsin, who worked with Pashin in authoring some of the first
post-perestroika legal reforms a decade ago and now serves as deputy
chairman of the presidential advisory council on improving the court
system, agreed that the rule of law was far from firmly entrenched in
Russia, but praised some improvements introduced under Putin.
Vitsin said that under the new Criminal Procedural Code, most of which took
effect July 1, the number of arrests has dropped by some 33 percent. The
code stipulates that warrants for arrests, searches and wiretaps must be
sanctioned by the courts rather than issued by prosecutors. Vitsin also
applauded the expanded rights of defendants and the higher standards
applied to evidence presented by prosecutors in criminal cases.
But he lamented that laws were not always applied consistently and
transparently, and that average citizens do not know their rights.
"In many ways, we remain Soviet people and we are accustomed to the idea
that the authorities can do with us whatever they please," Vitsin said.
Pashin, a harsh critic of Putin's reform, said it has made the court system
more dependent on federal authorities and judges more dependent on their
superiors.
Because salaries are low, Pashin said, judges are eager to please their
higher-ups and get the perks they can dole out, such as apartments, trips
abroad or stays at sanatoriums. At the same time, judges are easy to fire.
"The judicial system has become a means of strengthening the vertical
structure of power and nothing more," he said.
Criminal lawyer Karinna Moskalenko agreed that judges have become more
dependent and said they continue to view their primary duty as punishing
defendants rather than giving them a fair trial.
"Neither the old nor the new Criminal Procedural Code can change the
mentality of judges," she said.
Both Pashin and Moskalenko said the court system is so overburdened that
procedural violations and corner-cutting are commonplace.
One judge now handles 20 to 40 requests for arrest warrants per day, Pashin
said. "How many of these decisions can be just? ... It's a conveyer."
Yury Schmidt, a lawyer who helped secure the acquittal of environmentalist
Alexander Nikitin, agreed that the new laws are far from perfect, but
warned that blanket condemnations would only hinder the reform process.
"Constructive criticism is needed," Schmidt said. He praised a number of
the changes in criminal law, including the ban on "additional
investigation" -- a tactic often used by prosecutors to patch up shoddy
investigative work -- and new restrictions on appealing acquittals.
To take an example, the judge who acquitted Nikitin has not been punished,
Schmidt said; on the contrary, he is now up for a promotion.
******
#8
Chicago Tribune
November 25, 2002
Activists say Russia trying to hide graves
Searchers seek Stalin's victims
By Alex Rodriguez
Tribune foreign correspondent
TOKSOVO, Russia -- The Rzhevsky artillery range made an ideal killing ground.
The sound of Josef Stalin's secret police firing into the heads of Soviet
citizens could be explained away as noise from the range. The soil under
the evergreens and berry trees was sandy, so Stalin's firing squads could
quickly bury scores of bodies.
The men, women and children shot outside the St. Petersburg suburb of
Toksovo were victims of Stalin's murderous 1930s purges known as the Great
Terror. Their families never learned the true fates of their loved ones.
Soviet officials usually lied and said their relatives had died of natural
causes after their "rehabilitation."
Six decades later, Russian human-rights workers have unearthed mass graves
at the artillery range that they believe hold the remains of up to 30,000
victims of Stalin's purges. In one section of forest, 3-foot-deep graves
appear in every direction. Inside the graves, yellowed skulls have the
marks of execution--a single bullet hole in the back of the head, facial
bones shattered by the bullet's exit.
Officials with the human-rights group Memorial have been searching for the
graves for five years. In the process, they say they have encountered
Soviet-style tactics from the secret police's successor, the Federal
Security Service, aimed at keeping the graves cloaked in secrecy.
Recently, armed guards blocked the main road to the site. Later, sections
of the road were bulldozed or blown up, forcing journalists and Memorial
workers to trudge through 5 miles of forest.
When Memorial officials asked the security service's St. Petersburg office
for access to its archives as part of their research, the agency refused.
Officials in St. Petersburg and Moscow for the FSB, as the security service
is known, would not respond to requests for interviews.
"The FSB is deliberately hiding the location of mass graves, which, in
reality, are sites of crimes against humanity," said Irina Flige, who heads
up Memorial's St. Petersburg office and joined her husband, Venyamin Yofe,
in the five-year hunt for the Rzhevsky graves. Yofe died in April.
Alleged stonewalling
"This is always their standard reply: `We don't believe there are documents
that lay out exactly where the mass graves are,'" Flige said. "But any
archivist will tell you there are indirect ways of establishing the
existence of graves. Drivers' logs, maintenance logs, receipts. We can't
believe the FSB doesn't have the ability to find and compile these documents."
Millions died by execution or in labor camps during the Great Terror,
Stalin's systematic purge of Soviet citizens he saw as a threat and deemed
"enemies of the state."
Fueled by the 1934 assassination of Stalin's Leningrad party chief, Sergei
Kirov, the purges targeted suspect Communist Party officials and military
leaders, professors and peasants. Most were executed or sent to labor camps
without a trial. In the paranoia that swept across the country, 9 out of
every 10 Soviet generals were arrested, along with roughly half of the
membership of the country's Communist Party Congress.
Though the Great Terror persisted through much of the 1930s, its peak years
are regarded as 1937 and 1938, when the purges targeted average Soviet
citizens. In an 18-month span in 1937-38, up to 40,000 residents in the
region of St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, were victims of the purges.
Victim falsely accused
Margarita Kangur's father, Alexander, was one of those victims. A colleague
falsely accused him of suggesting that Soviet workers should have killed
Stalin instead of Kirov, Kangur said. Beaten and tortured, her father was
imprisoned at a Siberian labor camp for three years.
He was allowed to return to the Leningrad region but was banned from seeing
his family. He violated the ban once--on March 20, 1938, to be with
Margarita on her 3rd birthday. Within days he was arrested again and executed.
For years, Kangur believed her father was buried in a mass grave in the
village of Levashyovo, 9 miles northwest of St. Petersburg. Authorities
contend that is the only place in the St. Petersburg region where victims
of Stalin's purges were buried. After learning of the new grave site at the
Rzhevsky range, she's no longer sure.
"There's a conflict inside of me right now, because I must be sure exactly
where my father lies," Kangur said.
Five years of relentless detective work led Flige to the Rzhevsky range.
Aware that Stalin's NKVD secret police, predecessor to the KGB and FSB,
chose sandy areas as mass execution sites because it made digging easier,
Flige and Yofe used soil maps of the region surrounding St. Petersburg to
zero in on potential sites.
The pair doubted that the NKVD would use areas where the water table was
high, so they relied on groundwater maps to narrow the list of potential
sites further. They blanketed the region with newspaper advertisements
seeking witnesses who had any shred of information about where the
executions might have been carried out.
In the early 1990s, Russians who were children during the purges began
responding to the ads. They recalled seeing NKVD police throw villagers
into black vans almost every night and speed toward the Rzhevsky range.
After every raid, gunfire would ring out from the direction of the range.
David Pelgonen, 77, was one of those witnesses. As an 11-year-old boy,
Pelgonen gathered berries and mushrooms at the Rzhevsky range around the
time the NKVD used it for mass executions. He remembers a day in the 1930s
when, while gathering mushrooms, he found fragments of human bone
protruding from the soil. He told his father, who confronted soldiers at
the range about his son's discovery.
`Stay away from here'
"They told him, `Stay away from here, or you'll end up here,'" recalled
Pelgonen, one of many Finns who settled in small farming villages dotting
the bogs and pine forests south of the Finnish border.
In August, Flige and a corps of Memorial volunteers found the first
evidence of a mass grave at Rzhevsky: a pit filled with age-darkened bones
and skulls, many with a bullet hole through the back of the head. Since
then, Memorial workers have discovered 50 pits. Flige believes each pit
contains the remains of at least 30 people, stacked in three layers. The
bullet holes match the 9 mm rounds used by the NKVD.
The Memorial group plans to resume excavation work in the spring if the
Russian government balks at acknowledging the NKVD's use of Rzhevsky as a
site for Great Terror executions. In the meantime, Flige's St. Petersburg
office has been flooded with calls from Russians who believe their loved
ones may be buried at Rzhevsky.
Margarita Kangur is one of them.
"It's important for me to know exactly where he is, because it's in the
nature of Russians to come to the place where their relatives are buried,
so that they can express their feelings," Kangur said. "I've been asked,
`Why don't you put a cross in the ground at Levashyovo to commemorate your
father?' But I can't do this yet, because I can't be absolutely sure."
******
#9
Russia says NATO will support it on Chechen threat
MOSCOW, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday a threat of new Chechen
attacks inside Russia would only serve to boost a joint anti-terrorist
drive by Moscow and NATO and would backfire on the rebels.
In an open letter on Saturday, Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev
threatened to stage new attacks against Russian strategic targets and urged
NATO leaders to put pressure on Moscow to pull its 80,000-strong forces out
of Chechnya.
"Basayev's statement...in which he warns of new acts of terror against
Russia, will only help unite Russia and NATO in their efforts against
terrorism," Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's top Chechnya spokesman,
told Interfax news agency.
Basayev, who says he masterminded the mass hostage seizure at a Moscow
theatre last month, told the West to force the Kremlin to negotiate an end
to the decade-long conflict in the tiny North Caucasus province.
A total of 129 hostages and 41 rebels were killed when Russian special
forces stormed the building after three days.
President Vladimir Putin, who is against peace talks with elected Chechen
leader Aslan Maskhadov, has been only partially successful in convincing
the West that Russia's campaign against Chechen separatism is part of the
U.S.-led war against a global Islamic conspiracy.
In a radio interview over the weekend, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, the Kremlin's
envoy for Chechnya's human rights, called Basayev's letter an ultimatum and
urged Western countries to help Russia ward off the threat emanating from
Chechnya.
Basayev has been Russia's chief public enemy since his group took hundreds
of people hostage in a southern Russian hospital in 1995.
But Maskhadov, who has denied any role in the theatre hostage-taking,
distanced himself from the Basayev statement.
"Chechnya's official government has nothing to do with anything Shamil
Basayev may have to say or do," Maskhadov's spokesman Osman Firzauli was
quoted in an on-line edition of the Netherlands-based Chechen Times newspaper.
"We have repeated this several times and I would like to stress our
position once more...It is impossible to achieve anything through such
threats or acts of terror."
Moscow does not recognise Maskhadov as president and has set up its own
administration in the Chechen capital, Grozny.
But some European states believe moderates like Maskhadov offer the best
chance of resolving the conflict peacefully.
Russia handed Chechnya de facto independence in 1996, but Putin launched a
second military drive against the province in 1999.
******
#10
Los Angeles Times
November 25, 2002
Caucasus Conundrum
As the people worry, Putin thrives on war.
By Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya is a special correspondent for the newspaper Novaya
Gazeta in Moscow and author of "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in
Chechnya" (Harvill Press).
Chechnya is a sickness for Russia.
We may pretend to be happy at times, pretend that our economy is not
stagnant. We may choose to be glad that we do not have to line up for
sausages and eggs anymore. But it all seems irrelevant when you realize
that it is the war in the North Caucasus that controls life in Russia, a
war that has been going on intermittently for eight years, a war that has
claimed the lives of thousands of our citizens. And no one even knows for
sure how many victims there are because no one has counted.
The war enthrones the Kremlin leadership. It fires and appoints top-ranking
officials. It cripples the judiciary to such an extent that, instead of
being a democratic mechanism to ensure adversarial contests, courts turn
into a doormat used by the authorities for their own convenience. The free
press is being destroyed by this war. And on top of all this, today, after
the October terrorist act in Moscow, we also have to live in a fear that
does not let us go even for a minute.
An old acquaintance of mine called once and said: "Weird. There were lots
of people out in the streets over the weekend, and no terrorist act. Do you
happen to know why not?"
An hour later, another friend called, with almost the same words and the
same feeling: "I have been waiting for a terrorist act, but they will
probably again get us where we least expect it."
This is exactly the fear that has become hard-wired into our genetic code:
The war that to John Q. Public had seemed rather remote has now crept into
every household. For the thinking majority, life after the mass
hostage-taking at a Moscow theater is a feeling of being up in the air
around the clock: Will a new act of terror occur? And where? And how can
all this be stopped?
Even President Vladimir V. Putin -- he who tries to prove to the world that
he is such a strong and dashing guy -- has publicly hushed and rebuked
everybody and raised his voice to say no, do not hold your breath. That it
will not stop, there will be no peace talks because we are fighting
"international terrorism."
So is peace in Chechnya possible at all? And what kind of peace is possible
now, after Putin's statements that there will be no peace until all
terrorists are crushed and all those who even dare to breathe a word about
it will be reckoned among international terrorists?
All wars end in peace. History has failed to come up with any other
outcome. Moreover, peace, as history teaches us again, always starts with
the same thing: The warring sides, although they have killed lots of
people, sit down at the negotiating table and face each other. This is what
will happen in Russia too. Yet it is unclear when, exactly. And it is this
"when" that is the rub.
Some in Russia say, "There will be peace when the military wants it."
Others say, "When Putin needs it." I support a different point of view.
Putin is indeed the pragmatist that the West believes him to be. However,
the naive West thinks that Putin's pragmatism is for the sake of the
country he leads. Instead, Putin's pragmatism is, first and foremost, for
his own sake.
Today's regime in Russia, as personified first and foremost by Putin, is
interested only in power -- to keep it, consolidate and augment it, and do
it in such a way that opponents would not even be able to raise their heads.
As far as the current Chechnya war is concerned, Putin practices exactly
this pragmatism of personal power to the highest degree, which in fact is
barefaced cynicism. Putin does not care about civilian casualties (in more
than three years of the war he has not once expressed condolences to the
families of the killed Chechens) or even the thousands of victims among the
military who perish in Chechnya or die of wounds in hospitals. All that
interests him in the war is deriving the benefit that will guarantee his
reelection for a second term.
What do I mean by this? It is common knowledge that the Russian people are
irrational by nature. The majority of them do not require candidates
running for offices to provide clear-cut economic programs. In fact, the
people are even slightly irritated, as opinion polls show, when a candidate
is too intelligent -- or at least more intelligent than the mass. At the
same time, Russian people love macho -- they love brutality, demonstrations
of strong-handed policies and tough moves made for show.
I am sure Putin and the new team of spin doctors being knocked together to
run the 2004 presidential campaign are saving "peace in Chechnya" as a
tidbit for that campaign. A "strong Putin" will again be shown as a person
who had the guts to launch the war even before he became president, as the
president who allegedly broke international terrorism in the North Caucasus
and, finally, as someone who managed to "make peace," no matter how hard it
was to initiate peace talks.
In this scenario, one can expect first a sharp deterioration of the
situation in Chechnya in 2003. It will be Putin crushing the "backbone of
international terrorism." It means even more large-scale and severe
"mopping-up" operations, bombing, shelling, looting, people abducted and
disappearing without a trace, jackbooted pressure on the civilian
population. The ideological foundation for this cruelty will be presented
as a "hard-edged war against international terrorism."
For journalists, covering the current Chechnya war was bad even before now,
with the authorities harshly and illegally limiting journalists'
capabilities. Now the authorities will do the same thing with the help of
the law.
Recently, both chambers of parliament almost unanimously passed amendments
to the federal law on the "fight against terrorism" that ban any criticism
of the Kremlin leadership's policies in Chechnya, under the threat of
criminal liability and imprisonment.
The amendments strip journalists of the right to cover the war the way they
see it. The administration brackets almost the entire Chechen people as
bandits and terrorists, without sparing even children. And if "mopping-up"
operations in Chechnya are described in the media as what they really are
-- punitive military operations to kill and torture people -- such
reporting, according to the new legislation, can be interpreted as
"resistance to the counter-terrorist operation, propaganda and/or
justification of the terrorist cause."
The essence of the new amendments is that the actions of the elected
authorities are removed from the control of the public. This is something
that we saw in Soviet times, and we know the consequences perfectly well.
The examples are the war in Afghanistan and the ruined and ineffective
Soviet economy that is still felt in the total poverty of half of the
population.
But Putin needs to get reelected.
This is the sad background against which in 2004 Putin will be presented to
the Russian public as the "peacemaker." And the people will believe it.
Heartily acclaiming him, they will reelect him. But will the real situation
in Chechnya change? Of course not.
Putin's creed doesn't change. The war will continue to reproduce terrorism,
pushing the younger generation in Chechnya to become more and more radical.
What awaits us is the Israeli option, where every Palestinian sitting next
to you on a bus is feared.
This is exactly the "peace" that the "pragmatic" Putin regime has got in
store for us, no earlier than 2004.
******
#11
Reuters Foundation Alertnet
Relief Resource
21 Nov 2002
Two sides need to talk about Chechnya
Mariano Aguirre, director of the Peace Studies Centre (CIP) in Madrid,
reflects on lessons from the October siege of a Moscow theatre by Chechen
rebels. He argues that instead of congratulating the Russian president on
his strong-arm tactics, the international community should pressure on the
government and the separatist movement to negotiate an end to the violence
over Chechnya.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an attack to end a three-day siege
of a Moscow theatre in October, in which 128 hostages and 41 rebels died.
He was widely congratulated for his actions, but perhaps a third player
could have mediated between these two enemies, both of them lacking moral
legitimacy.
We would do well to think about whether we are prepared for similar events
that could happen in the future.
They say that 128 deaths are better than 700. It was actually 169, if you
include the rebels, since those guilty of the crime were people too.
The number of dead was not the only moot point. The terrorists should not
have kidnapped people to call attention to their cause. It is a human
rights violation, and if they consider it to be an act of a war, a
violation under the Geneva Convention. A peaceful action would have done
more for their cause.
But Putin's government should also have tried other methods. He could have
called on the European Union, for example, or Nobel prizewinner and former
U.S. President Jimmy Carter, or other neutral personalities.
The Russian president invoked the principle that one should never negotiate
with terrorism. As a moral and political principle, it is right not to give
in to blackmail, but his government does not have the moral and political
standing to back up this position.
A democratic government with inclusive, pluralist policies can argue that
it does not give in to force, but Moscow is sustaining a military
occupation that regularly violates human rights.
Chechnya has been occupied by 100,000 Russian troops since 1999. There is
no freedom of expression in Russia and its democracy is a facade. Putin
announced that Russia would not be brought to its knees, and that attitude
is the key to his actions.
Chechnya is partially closed off to journalists and humanitarian agencies.
Reports by Human Rights Watch in 2001 and 2002 say that there are no legal
checks on the Russian security forces.
They say: "In this legal framework, the Russian operations in Chechnya have
been carried out with unprecedented arbitrariness, which has led to massive
human rights violations. Russian troops have detained thousands of people,
many of whom have never been recorded as prisoners."
Troops ransack homes, there is no legal assistance and the number of
disappeared has grown. At the same time, obstacles are placed in the way of
investigations in Moscow into repressive military missions.
In October, French daily newspaper Le Monde said: "The inhabitants of
Chechnya disappear or are assassinated everyday by Russian forces or their
local allies, the pro-Russian Chechen militias. People disappear by the
thousands. There is no list of victims. The bodies are regularly found in
ruined buildings, razed lands or at the side of roads, sometimes scattered
in pieces or at times showing signs of torture."
Since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, Chechnya was an almost
independent territory of Russia. Between 1994 and 1996 the first post-Cold
War war between Moscow and Chechnya was unleashed, ending in a pact to
negotiate the future of the territory in five years.
The need to reinforce Russian strength against the pro-independence
challenge, the possibility that a Russian oil pipeline would pass through
there on its way from the Caspian Sea to the West, and the growth of mafias
and smuggling organisations produced the second Russian offensive from 1999.
The authority of the pro-independence leader Aslan Masjadov was weakened by
armed groups who carried out extortion, kidnappings, and imposed a slave
trafficking system and a fanatic Islamicist republic.
The apparent intention of the two Chechen warlords to create an Islamic
republic joining Chechnya and neighbouring Dagestan provoked a regional
crisis in 1999.
Two buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk were blown up in September that
year, killing 217 people. Chechen involvement was never proved, but Putin
and the Russian generals used the case to get revenge.
For Putin it was useful to strengthen his image as a tough president and
for the generals it was a way of getting their own back for the defeat they
suffered in the first Chechen war.
In a balanced and prophetic essay, Sergei Kovalev, member of the Dumas and
president of the Moscow Human Rights Institute, wrote in the New York
Review of Books in February 2000 that Chechnya demonstrated the cynicism
and authoritarianism of Putin's government.
He said: "The Russian army is prepared for genocide and there is only one
way to destroy the guerrillas -- not to distinguish between them and the
unarmed population amongst whom they hide. A genocide campaign must be
carried out in the region."
He added: "What's new about this case is that the whole of Russian society
is prepared to carry out genocide. There is no rejection of cruelty and
violence. But is Russia prepared for a prolonged terrorist campaign in its
own cities?"
Russian troops left Grozny in ruins when they took it in this second
offensive. People there live in miserable conditions, with minimal
international assistance.
The United States and the European Union were already keeping their
distance from the situation before September 2001 in order not to
inconvenience Putin. The implicit logic was that if they were critical it
could lead to instability in Russia, the neo-communists would make a
comeback or there would be a coup. In order to avoid a repressive
government they supported an anti-democratic government.
From September 11, 2001, the lack of interest in Chechnya became even more
obvious. Putin placed the war in Chechnya in the global war on terrorism
and offered his support to Washington's war in Afghanistan.
Nothing justifies a Chechen command kidnapping innocent civilians, but
there is an urgent need for a way out of the war in Chechnya. Perhaps it is
not independence or handing over territory to fanatical mafiosi, but the
massive human rights violations will lead to even more destruction and more
attacks.
President Putin should start negotiating. Other options -- between the war
on Grozny and terrorism in Moscow -- need to be tried.
As outsiders, we should be more careful in our conclusions as well as in
our congratulations, in order to avoid being trapped between fundamentalism
and the discourse of war.
Website: http://www.fuhem.es/CIP/
*******
#12
Yezhenedelny Zhurnal
November 19, 2002
PEACE PROCESS PARTICIPANTS
Stopping abuses by the federal forces in Chechnya is the only solution
Author: Mikhail Fishman
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
THE POLITICAL ELITE HAS ADMITTED THAT THE "ROUTINE" VIOLENCE OF THE
FEDERAL FORCES IS THE MAIN OBSTACLE TO POLITICAL SETTLEMENT IN
CHECHNYA. NOW THE SUPREME COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF ONLY HAS TO PUBLICLY
ANNOUNCE THIS. AND RUSSIA MAY BE TAKING THE MOST SIGNIFICANT STEP TO
DESTROYING THE SLAVERY SYSTEM OF THE SOVIET ARMY.
The Chechen war had determined Russia's political agenda even
before the Moscow hostage-taking. The president's authority is based
on his declared readiness to resolve the Chechnya problem. Search
operations, political settlement projects, Yury Budanov's criminal
case - the situation in the military had been vital for the Russian
politics before October 23. The war has turned into a number of
cliches. However, after the hostage-taking on Melnikov Street in
Moscow, the sides using the cliches have clashed again. There was a
scandal in Brussels, where President Putin suddenly rudely retorted to
one more question about the situation in Chechnya. Probably, the
foundation of the around-war polemics could not bear the strike.
After the Nord-Ost events, when the nation required a retribution
and the public opinion visibly moved to approval of applying the
military force in Chechnya, it was natural to expect tough actions and
tough announcements from the authorities. The Defense Minister
suspended withdrawal of "redundant" federal forces from Chechnya,
which, according to him, "immediately started a tough but strictly
addressed special operation in all districts of the republic."
Alexander Oslon, president of the Public Opinion Foundation, says:
"Chechnya has once again become relevant. Russian society views
releasing hostages from the theatre as a victory: we are able to
respond to offenders. The president's popularity rating could not rise
only because it had already reached its peak." According to the POF's
polls, the majority of Russians accept the official theory of an
international terrorist attack (50%, against 30% who connect the
hostage-taking with the Chechen war). This means that the majority of
people have withdrawn from the problem and are trusting the government
to solve it. Oslon thinks the president has received carte blanche for
any policy in Chechnya.
However, two weeks after the Dubrovka terrorist act, the defense
minister remained a minority and the Kremlin continued its peace
course. Soon after Sergey Ivanov's statement, President Putin stressed
that large-scale operations in Chechnya are harmful, inadmissible, and
should be restricted. On the threshold of his visit to Brussels, the
president made a speech at the meeting with loyal Chechen activists.
Putin supported "the acceleration of the constitutional process" and
estimated the present situation the republic as "very difficult from
...human standpoint." He meant that the Chechen people are "exhausted
with the crisis: the long years of the conflict have led to many
dramas." He also called on the Chechen community to continue the
mutual peace process in Chechnya. However, Putin warned that from now
on the Russian government will consider those who still support
negotiations with Maskhadov as terrorists' supporters.
At the end of the last week, Chief of the General Staff Anatoly
Kvashnin announced that the number of the federal forces in Chechnya
"will definitely decrease". The peace process has been accelerated and
the referendum on the Chechen constitution will be held in spring.
However, human right defenders are objecting to carrying out the
referendum in haste: they have grounded reasons to believe that a
referendum held in a hostile atmosphere will turn the peace process
into a fiction and will exacerbate the situation. Besides, the order
on creation of the Chechen Interior Ministry has been signed. Thus,
the Kremlin has symbolically shown that it is prepared to share its
authorities for putting Chechnya in order with Chechnya itself.
In short, the Kremlin rapidly stopped the aggressive rhetoric.
However, Putin did not mention the Russian Army in his speech to
Chechen leaders, while it is the main figure in putting the republic
in order and simultaneously the main obstacle for placing order in
Chechnya. It is known that Chechen activities drew the president's
attention to the behavior of Russian soldiers in peaceful districts of
Chechnya - and the president agreed that this issue exists.
The Duma commission for assisting in peace settlement in Chechnya
discussed the same issue at its latest meeting. Frants Klintsevich,
deputy leader of the Unity Duma faction and deputy chairman of the
commission told our correspondent, "There were strict estimations
concerning violations of the federal forces and the conditions for
carrying out a referendum." According to Klintsevich, the matter in
question is "routine issues"; for instance, a soldier beat an old man,
took away his TVset; sometimes during checks on the roads those who
are in a hurry can pass by for money - and everyone knows about it;
very often people are arrested without explanation of the reasons.
Klintsevich says, "We should not compare professional military who are
eliminating guerrillas with those who are benefiting by the operation
- however, peaceful residents are annoyed with such violations and
they fill the ranks of gunmen. Certain representatives of security
structures often react at such noted inadequately." Thus, the Duma
deputy distinctly but "politically correctly" determines the system
basis for the present insolubility of the Chechen conflict. The
president is speaking about the same, when he avoids "real names" and
speaks about a complicated from the human standpoint situation. Anti-
peacekeeping role of the Russian army in Chechnya is not discussed.
Admission of the destructive function of the Russian Armed Forces is a
direct admission of the state's weakness, and overcoming this weakness
is the point of the Chechen operation - it is a vicious circle.
On the threshold of the scandalous Brussels summit the president
mentioned the "stable European peace settling tradition" and suggested
that supporters of negotiation with Maskhadov should be an example,
and "negotiate with bin Laden and Mullah Omar first." The president is
correct: the requirements of a political solution in Chechnya from the
European diplomacy and the Russian liberals are actually a requirement
to negotiate with Maskhadov. However, Maskhadov is a too dubious
figure. At the same time, it is more important that the clich? of
Maskhadov's being a peacekeeper and negotiator has been as useful for
both sides as the clich? of an international terrorism. However, the
Brussels scandal dispelled the myth of the Second Chechen War. Now, it
is possible to re-create it, or to start a real talk on the grounds
for Russia's integration into the western society and on the Chechen
war.
Terrorists and their supporters should be separated from the
political process, says Vladimir Putin. The governmental meeting
scheduled for Thursday will make changes to the military reform
concept - it is directly connected with the Chechen problem and the
inability of the security structures which exacerbates the Chechen
crisis. In September, the experiment for transferring the 76th Pskov
division to a contract basis was publicly discredited - the General
Staff started it as a demonstrative lobbying campaing in order to
delay the reform of the Russian Armed Forces. After this, a working
group made up of representatives of the Finance Ministry, General
Staff, Defense Ministry, the Union of Right Forces, and the Transition
Economy Institute prepared a new concept for conscription reform. The
draft law stipulates transition to a contract-based army with
maintenance of a six-month obligatory conscription for military
service. Apparently, the draft is to be submitted to the Duma fairly
soon.
Possibly, Russia is now taking the most significant step toward
destroying the slavery system of the Soviet Army. However, as long as
the structural reform of the Russian Armed Forces is a "matter for the
future", it is not enough for peace in Chechnya. The president needs
to declare and start fighting the "routine" violence of the federal
forces in Chechnya - it will be a humane action of a civilized
government and the only solution to the problem. The Russian Army
should be the only subject for real negotiations and political
settlement in Chechnya. The conditions of these negotiations should be
the toughest.
(Translated by Arina Yevtikhova)
********
#13
Montreal Gazette
November 25, 2002
U.S.S.R.'s old arms may have new use: U.S., Ukraine in dispute over sold
radar system
By Fred Weir
Moscow
A dispute over whether Ukraine sold an advance radar system to Iraq has
again focused international attention on just how much dangerous weaponry
is leaking out of the fragmented former Soviet military-industrial complex.
The answer might be a lot more than previously suspected.
Russian experts warn that a substantial part of the former Soviet Union's
massive arms stockpiles have already been sold on world markets. They say
poorly-supervised war factories are providing criminal groups and rogue
regimes with conventional weapons and perhaps even the means to make
biological and nuclear arms. "All former Soviet republics inherited
stockpiles of sophisticated weapons, and leakage is possible in a majority
of these cases," says Alexander Pikayev, a military specialist with the
Carnegie Endowment in Moscow.
"Under the circumstances, I think it's surprising that there are so few
allegations going around."
Last month, the United States cut off $54 million in aid to Ukraine,
alleging that tape recordings made two years ago by a former bodyguard of
President Leonid Kuchma appear to show the Ukrainian leader authorizing the
illegal sale of four Kolchuga radar stations to Iraq for $100 million.
Unlike conventional radars, the Kolchuga emits no radio pulse and tracks
incoming aircraft by passively scanning the signals they give off.
Washington fears such units could help Iraqi air defences survive an attack
because U.S. anti-radar weapons work by homing in on radar beams. Ukraine
has denied the U.S. allegation.
Earlier this month, U.S. and British arms-control monitors reported that
Ukraine had failed to convincingly refute the allegations. But Kuchma's
chief assistant, Viktor Medvedchuk, rejected their criticism and complained
that the American experts were not satisfied even after Ukraine had given
them all necessary documents.
Ukraine has asked a UN Security Council committee responsible for sanctions
against Iraq to investigate independently. Medvedchuk promised to
co-operate with the UN if Ukraine's "national interests and dignity are
acknowledged."
No matter how the U.S.-Ukraine radar dispute turns out, arms experts in
Moscow suggest that Western scrutiny of the post-Soviet arms bazaar may be
too little and too late.
"Iraq has had a constant flow of spare parts for their hardware, despite 12
years of supposedly tough embargo," says Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent
military expert.
"Saddam Hussein still has radars that work and planes that fly, and that
couldn't happen without regular maintenance. This arrives in Iraq through a
complicated network of middlemen, but the materials and expertise come from
the former U.S.S.R.," he says.
"There is little doubt that top officials in many former Soviet countries
know what's going on, and probably take a cuts from the sales."
The largest sources of weaponry for black marketeers are the vast Soviet
arms depots built to supply the Red Army. Experts say these are scattered
all over the former Soviet Union.
*******
#14
The Taipei Times
November 25, 2002
Russia is showing China how to break away from the past
Both have had their fling with communism but only Russia has moved on and
is now setting an example that China must follow if it wants to play a
central role in shaping the future of the world
By Cao Chang-Ching
Cao Chang-ching is a writer and journalist based in New York.
The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) 16th National Congress is over.
Although the rest of humanity has entered the 21st century, Chinese
politics remain in the 1950s. Just as at all party representative
congresses in the past, the representatives to this congress were obedient,
read their documents at the same time, listened to reports and then raised
their hands like robots, completely controlled by the supreme power, the
general secretary on the podium.
Bordering China, however, Russia has over the past 12 years held two
presidential elections, two national referendums, five elections to the
Duma and at least three gubernatorial or legislative elections in each of
its 89 regions.
On Dec. 12, 1993, the day Russia held a referendum regarding its
constitution and also the day of its first elections to the Duma, I
published an article in the US weekly World Journal (¥@¬É¤é³ø), entitled
"Today, the people of Russia vote to decide the new constitution and the
new Duma" (¤µ¤Ñ¡A«Xù´µ¤H¥Á¥Î¿ï²¼¨M©w·s¾Ëªk©M·s°ê·|). In it, I compared the
Russian and Chinese reform models, stressing that the Russian people voted
and were about to leave the era of Animal Farm behind and enter the era of
human life, which includes the right to choose. Once Russia had removed the
communist tumor that had been spreading for 70 years, there was certain to
be a short period of weakness, but Russia will enjoy a dignified future
where no one will be able to bring the past back to life.
Nine years have passed. The CCP is still holding its National Congress,
depriving the Chinese people if their right to choose. Russia has seen
revolutionary change.
Russia now enjoys democratic elections and press freedom.
Democracy contains at least two important ingredients. One is regular and
fair elections. The other is press freedom. Not only has Russia held all
the above-mentioned elections, it has also allowed private newspapers,
television, radio and other printed publications and people are beginning
to enjoy unprecedented freedom of expression. During the recent hostage
incident in Moscow, the media were allowed to freely criticize President
Vladimir Putin. On the recent anniversary of the October Revolution,
thousands of people (mostly elderly) holding pictures of Lenin, Stalin,
Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein gathered in Moscow's squares to remember
the revolution and the bloodshed. Russians are free to express their own
political opinions.
It is exactly these regularly held elections and the freedom of the press
that have brought realism to Russian foreign policy and purged it of
ideology. Russia no longer sees the US and the West as enemies, it no
longer opposes NATO's eastward expansion, it has established the historic
US-Russia Council and is attempting to join the West. After the Sept. 11
attacks, Putin was the first person to call US President George W. Bush to
express his strong support for anti-terrorist activities.
Russia has also given up military imperialism. Spending on education now
exceeds military spending.
Military policy is another area in Russia that has seen significant change.
Russia no longer attempts to play the role of an empire,and it has cut
military spending and transferred these funds to the economy.
Leon Aron, director of the department for research about Russia and the
former Soviet republics at the American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research, published an article entitled Russia's Revolution in this
month's issue of Commentary. In it, he says that military spending, which
during the Soviet era made up 30 percent of the nation's GDP, has fallen to
5 percent of GDP (the figure for the US is 3 percent). During the Soviet
era, the army consisted of 4 million troops. This was first cut to 1.7
million troops in 1996, and then another cut this year brought the number
down to 1 million. A further cut to 650,000 is slated for next year. (The
PLA consists of 2.5 million troops and the US has 1.25 million). From 1992
to 1995, Russia repatriated 800,000 troops, 400,000 civilian personnel and
500,000 dependents from Eastern Europe. With the departure of the last
Russian soldier from Estonia in September 1995, Russia returned,
voluntarily, to its 17th-century borders.
The Soviet Union was in possession of 10,000 deployable strategic warheads.
During his recent visit to the US, Putin agreed to cut the number of
Russian missiles to 1,500 within 10 years (the US will cut its arsenal to
2,200).
A plan approved this year will abolish Russia's 300-year-old draft by 2010
in favor of a US-style system where service is voluntary. Russian spending
on education exceeded military spending for the first time ever last year.
Russia has also undergone full privatization.
The country has taken a path different from China, implementing political
reform ahead of economic reform. Boris Yeltsin hired Jeffrey Sachs, an
economist at Harvard University, as consultant for economic reform in order
to carry out major changes in the Russian economy, something that has
become known as shock therapy.
Chinese intellectuals did not look favorably on Russia's bold and resolute
privatization and remained passionately loyal to China's traditionally
conservative methods. Looking at the situation today, Russia's approach was
successful and recovery has been quick.
At the moment, the rouble is stable and Russian foreign-exchange reserves
have increased to US$38.5 billion. Not only have financial expenditures and
revenues been balanced, but there is even a financial surplus. Over the
past two years, Russia has repaid US$10 billion of the US$18 billion it
owed the International Monetary Fund. While the global economy was in
recession and with even the US economy stagnating, the Russian economy grew
by 8 percent in 2000 -- the same figure as for China that year. Last year,
Russia's economy grew 5.5 percent and growth of 5.2 percent is predicted
for this year. On Nov. 12 last year, the Wall Street Journal praised Russia
in an editorial, saying that the Russian situation may be the best since
Peter the Great.
Chinese entrepreneur Yang Rong (¥õ¿Ä), who has been called China's
third-richest man by Forbes magazine, was forced to escape to the US as the
result of a dispute with the local government in Liaoning province over
company ownership. As is the case with so many other so-called private or
township enterprises, ownership of the company that Yang led is unclear.
The "private" character of these companies is substantially false.
Russia's shock therapy led to true privatization. According to Aron's
article, only 5 percent of Russia's GDP came from private enterprises in
1991. Today, this figure has grown to 70 percent. Using the book market as
an example, 80 percent of books in Russian stores are now published by
private companies. Books by Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Nabokov, Sakharov,
Hayek and Keynes can be found in big bookstores.
Privatization has stimulated the economy, and over the past two years,
Russian oil production has grown by 15 percent. In February, it reached
7.28 million barrels per day, for the first time exceeding that of Saudi
Arabia, and it now amounts to 10 percent of the global oil market. Not only
were Russian food supplies sufficient last year for the first time since
the early 1960's, but the country also exported more than 5 million tonnes
of grain.
The first thing Lenin did after coming to power in 1917 was to nationalize
all land and establish agricultural collectives. In July this year, 548
million acres of agricultural land -- an area four times the size of France
-- was denationalized and Russians can now own and freely sell their land.
Foreigners can now lease land for up to 49 years (or buy it through Russian
nationals). The next targets of privatization are the state monopolies in
gas, utilities, railroads and state pension funds.
The Russian government is implementing large tax cuts. Early last year, the
nation cut individual income tax from 30 percent to 13 percent and tax on
corporate profits from 35 percent to 24 percent. Individual income tax in
Russia is now among the lowest in Europe, second only to Ireland's 12
percent. Despite the cuts, tax revenue in Russia increased by 50 percent
last year, due to the economic stimulus and increase in individual and
corporate income they provided.
The country has also seen major improvements in living standards.
In the 1980s, Russians spent an average of 54 hours a month in queues. On a
list of 221 essential food products, only 23 were regularly available in
shops and many items were rationed and various coupons used. Today's free
economy has filled store shelves.
In 1988, 43 million people in the Soviet Union -- one in six -- lived in
families where per-capita monthly income was less than 75 rubles (US$7.50
at the underground exchange rate). World Bank figures show that average
per-capita income had reached US$2,250 by 1999. In 2000, the figure for
China was US$855, US$5,020 for the Czech Republic and US$4,070 for Poland.
In 1990, there were 18 cars per 100 Russian households. Last year, this
figure had increased to 42, and it is predicted to rise to 52 this year,
which means that over half of all Russian households will own a car. Two
and a half million of the 9 million people living in Moscow own cellular
phones. Over the past two years, the number of Russians connecting to the
Internet grew by 40 percent (unlike China, Russia has never installed
firewalls to restrict the flow of information).
During the communist era, there were no private charities in Russia. Last
year, there were already 70,000. In 2000, the number of colleges had
increased by 75 percent and the number of students had increased by 50
percent compared to 1992.
In 1991, only 500,000 of almost 300 million Soviet citizens had traveled.
Last year, 5.25 million out of 145 million Russians had done so.
According to exit polls, 71 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds supported Boris
Yeltsin in the presidential election in 1996, while the communist candidate
only received 23 percent of their vote. When asked what the basic elements
of a decent society were, 75 percent of those planning to vote for Yeltsin
named equality of opportunity.
Grigoriy Chkhartishvili, Russia's most popular writer, said that "the most
precious product of this evolution has been human dignity." People have
been given the right and opportunity to freedom of choice.
Bordering China, Russia has become a mirror reflecting the ugliness of
Chinese politics. At the same time, however, this mirror also brings light
to China, letting the Chinese people, who have also experienced communism,
see clearly what the basic components of a decent society really are and
what the most precious product of reform should be.
Translated by Perry Svensson
******
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