Johnson's Russia List
#6601
15 December 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. Reuters: Russia LUKOIL says politics torpedoed Iraq deal.
2. RIA Novosti: IRAQI AMBASSADOR: BAGHDAD WILL NOT ANNUL CONTRACTS WITH
OTHER
RUSSIAN COMPANIES EXCEPT LUKOIL.
3. www.fednews.ru: REMARKS BY PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN AT A MEETING WITH
THE
MEMBERS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION, THE KREMLIN, DECEMBER 10.
4. RIA Novosti: RUSSIA REFUSED TO EXTEND VISAS FOR 30 AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS.
5. Interfax: RUSSIAN SECURITY CHIEF RECOUNTS COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
SUCCESSES OF
2002.
6. New York Times book review: Benson Bobrick, 'The Shaman's Coat': The
Fate
of Siberia's Indigenous People. (re A Native History of Siberia by Anna Reid)
7. Washington Post: Susan Glasser, Psychiatry's Painful Past Resurfaces in
Russian Case. Handling of Chechen Murder Reminds Many of Soviet Political
Abuse
of Mental Health System. (Budanov)
8. The Observer (UK): Nick Cohen, Trouble in Tashkent. The West - and
particularly the US - seems blind to Uzbekistan's cruel government.
9. AFP: Moldova seeks end to isolation in president's US excursion.
10. BBC Monitoring: Russian MPs offer divided response to NATO expansion.
(Konstantin Kosachev, Gennadiy Zyuganov, Vladimir Lukin, and Lyubov Sliska)]
*******
#1
Russia LUKOIL says politics torpedoed Iraq deal
MOSCOW, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Russia's top oil firm LUKOIL said on Sunday that
Moscow's support for last month's United Nations resolution on disarming
Iraq had pushed Baghdad to scrap a deal to develop a huge oilfield.
LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov told Reuters in an interview he saw no
U.S. pressure behind the Iraqi decision to break off an accord on the West
Qurna oilfield. He suggested other Russian and Chinese contracts with
Baghdad could be next.
"There were no economic grounds, because the situation with West Qurna was
simply the same as it had stood two or three years ago," he said.
"What has been done, I think, is more linked to the reaction to Russia's
position on U.N. inspectors. Russia supported actions which seemed clear
and logical to the international community."
Iraq's ambassador to Russia said Moscow and Baghdad would continue to work
together on oil development despite the broken contract.
"We are continuing to cooperate with Russian companies, especially in the
strategic area of oil and gas," Abbas Khalaf told an Abu Dhabi television
correspondent who provided Reuters with a translation of his Arabic
language comments.
"It's normal for these kinds of conflicts to arise between partners. This
is being highlighted because the contract is a big one."
LUKOIL said on Thursday it had received a letter from the Iraqi Energy
Ministry saying Baghdad had rescinded a $3.7 billion deal, signed in 1997
with LUKOIL and two other smaller Russian firms, Zarubezhneft and
Mashinoimport, to develop West Qurna. The region has oil reserves of
several billion barrels.
Baghdad has said the deal was scrapped because no major work has been
carried out on the field since 1997. LUKOIL says it was waiting for the
lifting of U.N. sanctions, imposed on Iraq when it invaded Kuwait in 1990,
to start massive investment.
Alekperov, who is effectively chief executive of LUKOIL, said on Sunday he
considered the deal still valid. Both the company and Russia's Foreign
Ministry had sent letters asking for clarification.
"Those actions are of course making other Russian firms wary of working in
Iraq," he said. Russia and Iraq, he added, had signed contracts worth
billions of dollars.
"If such actions are taken today against us, I think tomorrow or the day
after tomorrow we could expect Iraq to take similar steps against Chinese
companies."
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has a contract to develop the $700
million Al-Adhdab field -- the largest oil development deal signed in the
country after West Qurna.
*******
#2
IRAQI AMBASSADOR: BAGHDAD WILL NOT ANNUL CONTRACTS WITH OTHER RUSSIAN
COMPANIES EXCEPT LUKOIL
MOSCOW, DECEMBER 15, 2002. /FROM RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENTS VLADIMIR
PAKHOMOV, ALEXANDER SMOTROV/. - Baghdad has annulled the contract concluded
with the Russian Lukoil company in 1997 for development of the "Kurna-2"
oilfield "for purely economic reasons", Iraq's ambassador in Moscow Abbas
Halaf said at a press conference on Sunday.
"This conflict did not break out today," he said. The parties "have been
exchanging letters and claims" on this oilfield development since 1998, he
pointed out.
The head of the Iraqi diplomatic delegation assured that Lukoil was not
fulfilling its obligations. "The annulment was our last measure," he
reported. Lukoil stated that the delay of the oilfield development was due
to the UN sanctions regime imposed on Iraq, the ambassador also stressed.
"Theoretically, it is right, but not practically," he pointed out. He said
the "sanctions regime allowed certain works and certain activities". As an
example, the Iraqi ambassador pointed to several big Russian oil companies'
work in the same conditions in compliance with the permission of the UN
sanctions committee. The "Mashinoimport" company recently signed a contract
to drill 100 boreholes in the south of Iraq, he recalled.
So far the Iraqi side has not received any answer from Lukoil, the
ambassador stressed. "There has been no official letter so far," he said.
The Lukoil situation can repeat with any foreign company, the Iraqi
ambassador pointed out. "However, Iraq has no intention to break contracts
with other Russian companies," he stated.
*******
#3
TITLE: REMARKS BY PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN AT A MEETING WITH THE
MEMBERS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION, THE
KREMLIN, DECEMBER 10, 2002
[PRESIDENT.KREMLIN.RU, DECEMBER 11, 2002]
SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)
Good day, dear colleagues,
I suggest the following procedure: I will first say a few
words and then we will just have a free exchange of opinions.
Today is International Human Rights Day. The date has a direct
bearing on your work. I think it would be proper for us to use this
day as an occasion to discuss in an informal manner the entire
range of issues that are of concern, that must be of concern to you
and me and all of us.
Protecting civil rights and freedoms is a highly relevant
issue for Russia. You know that next year will see the tenth
anniversary of our Constitution. It declares the basic human rights
and freedoms to be the highest value and it enshrines them as
self-implementing standards. I must say that this is of course a
great achievement.
But there are still many, far too many questions regarding the
practical implementation of these norms. In fact, there is a huge
gap between the constitutional guarantees and the real
opportunities for people to exercise their rights. Above all, this
applies to social rights.
This is in many ways connected with the shortage of financial
resources. But no budget, even the wealthiest of budgets, can cope
with such a task in an environment of bureaucratic arbitrariness.
This is because people are confronted, far too often,
unfortunately, with irresponsibility of the authorities at all
levels.
And in this connection the first thing I would like to draw
your attention to is the court practice of dealing with cases
connected with human rights. And secondly, work with complaints
from citizens. Both these areas are directly linked to the state of
our legal framework.
But, of course, there are many more problem areas and issues.
In my introductory remarks I will just draw attention to this
because afterwards we can discuss any question that you consider to
be a priority.
And this leads me to ask for your help and support in
organizing public examination of all the bills which in one way or
another have to do with the rights of Russian citizens.
Practice shows that those who draft the bills do not always
take this aspect into account. Besides, it is extremely important
to be pro-active and to prevent the passing of legislation that
leads to conflict situations. In connection with the debate on the
reform of the housing and utilities sector people have already
expressed justified fears, chief of which is that the whole reform
will boil down to raising pay for housing and services.
As for work with citizens' complaints, the President's
administration has received over 650,000 such complaints since the
beginning of the year. And as far as I know, your Commission has
received more than five thousand in just five months. They contain
complaints about unjustified refusals to citizens, token replies,
red tape and obstacles posed by departmental instructions.
I am told that in dealing with complaints we are still guided
by legislation dating back to 1968. We have long been living in a
different country, but we are working according to the laws of the
past. But your commission has some experienced lawyers and
representatives of human rights movements. There are those who
seriously work to protect the rights of consumers. You have
considerable experience that can make your work with complaints far
more effective.
And, finally, a very important issue is protecting the rights
of children. I would like to make a special note of that.
Homelessness, crime and drug addiction -- all these are to a large
extent the results of the violation of the rights of children. The
bodies that are to deal with these matters continue to work without
a common strategy. And I would ask you to take a close look at the
activities of the state and society in this sphere.
In conclusion I would like to say a few words about the
coordination of actions by human rights organizations. Of course,
every organization chooses its own priorities and I don't think we
have the right to impose anything on them, we should on no account
over-organize this work, but considering the high professional
level of your Commission, you could render support to any of your
colleagues in every area that they consider to be priorities,
somehow consolidate this movement and offer effective ways of
solving the problems that they consider to be the most important.
I have mentioned only what lies on the surface, but I don't
think that this exhausts everything that may be of interest to us.
I don't think we should avoid other issues, acute issues that the
authorities often dislike, issues of a political character and
political guarantees of the rights and freedoms of citizens. Let us
discuss that too.
We are all interested in our state being effective and open,
so that our society should be of a kind with which the ordinary
citizen should feel comfortable communicating. So that every
Russian citizen should feel comfortable in the Russian Federation.
That, of course, greatly depends on the quality of partnership
emerging between the civil society and the state. I am ready to
discuss this topic.
Thank you.
*******
#4
RUSSIA REFUSED TO EXTEND VISAS FOR 30 AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS
MOSCOW, DECEMBER 15, 2002. /FROM A RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT/. - In 2002
Russia refused to extend visas for 30 volunteers from the American Peace
Corps governmental organisation, said Russia's FSB head Nikolai Patrushev
at a meeting with Russia's leading mass media heads on Sunday.
The American volunteers were denied entry into the country after it had
been established that "they had been collecting information on the social
and political and economic situation in the regions of Russia, on members
of authorities and administrative officers, election procedures etc.",
according to Patrushev.
Former head of the Far Eastern Peace Corps department Valerie Iban violated
the border regime by penetrating into the closed zone on the Russia-China
border, Patrushev stated. "Another Peace Corps volunteer, former US
Intelligence officer Brown, who in 1970s was engaged in military personnel
recruitment, was trying hard to establish close relations with local
administrative officers and heads of big defence enterprises," the FSB head
pointed out. These people were forced to leave Russia before the expiring
date.
Patrushev recalled that the American humanitarian Peace Corps had been
operating on Russia's territory since 1992. A total of about 200 American
volunteers are currently working in Russia's 30 regions.
*******
#5
RUSSIAN SECURITY CHIEF RECOUNTS COUNTERINTELLIGENCE SUCCESSES OF 2002
Interfax
Moscow, 15 December: Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Nikolay Patrushev
has said that a US Central Intelligence Agency attempt to obtain classified
information about Russia's advanced weapons programmes and the country's
defence contacts with the CIS was thwarted in 2002.
"We have prevented a heavy blow from being delivered to Russia's defence
capabilities and security," Patrushev said at a meeting with heads of the
Interfax, ITAR-TASS and RIA-Novosti news agencies and the ORT and RTR
television stations.
"The third secretary of the US Embassy's consular department was expelled
from the country for activities inconsistent with the official's diplomatic
status," the FSB chief said. "Two Russian citizens were detained on charges
of high treason. One of them has been given a prison sentence." Patrushev
said that Army Col Aleksandr Sypachev was detained as he was handing over
classified reports to a foreign intelligence service agent. "He collected
information about Russian intelligence service personnel and other data
which constitute a state secret," he said.
The FSB chief noted that Russian citizen Viktor Kalyadin was convicted of
high treason in the summer of 2002. "Kalyadin orchestrated the gathering of
highly classified information about Russia's key development programmes for
the US intelligence service. Kalyadin was sentenced to 14 years in a
maximum-security prison and his property was confiscated," Patrushev said.
He said that his service has also thwarted the spying activities of Maj-Gen
Rasulov, an Azerbaijani envoy at the headquarters for coordinating military
cooperation within the CIS. "The documents that were seized from him
represent a state secret. Rasulov was recalled from Russia and is barred
from entry to our country for five years," the FSB chief said.
Patrushev said that in 2002, Russia refused to extend entry visas for 30
Peace Corps officials. "Some of them were involved in gathering information
about the political and socioeconomic situation in Russian regions, about
governing bodies and the course of elections," he said.
World Corps is a US government organization that has been active in Russia
since 1992, with about 200 of its members currently working in nearly 30 of
the country's regions.
The FSB chief said that foreign intelligence service agents act through
religious organizations. He said a Turkish religious-nationalist
organization set up several companies in Russia to conduct a wide range of
intelligence operations. "The sect collected information about the
situation in the North Caucasus, promoted pro-Turkish and pro-Islamic ideas
among Russian youth and studied potential candidates for pro-Turkish lobby
groups in local authorities," Patrushev said.
"We have information about close contacts between the sect's members and
representatives of Turkish organizations involved in providing assistance
to rebel groups in Chechnya," he said.
Patrushev said that in 2002 security agencies have thwarted the activities
of more than 50 of the sect's members in Bashkortostan, Dagestan and
Karachay-Cherkessia.
"Four foreigners have been detained this year on charges of illegally
purchasing military hardware and munitions," he said.
******
#6
New York Times
December 15, 2002
book review
'The Shaman's Coat': The Fate of Siberia's Indigenous People
By BENSON BOBRICK
Benson Bobrick is the author, among other books, of ''East of the Sun: The
Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia.''
A Native History of Siberia.
By Anna Reid.
Illustrated. 226 pp. New York: Walker & Company. $25.
Toward the end of the 16th century, Siberia fell to the Russians as an
unexpected prize. When this conquest and occupation began, European Russia
stood deep in its own ashes after a half-century of war, famine, plague and
despotic rule under Ivan the Terrible, Russia's first czar. Ivan's imperial
ambitions had been thwarted to the west by Poland and Sweden and to the
south by the Crimean Tatars backed by the Ottoman Turks. Russia then turned
to the east, and within the space of a few generations acquired a territory
larger than the Roman Empire.
In statistical terms, that territory covers five million square miles
(about a twelfth of the total land surface of the globe) and stretches from
the Arctic to Central Asia, the Urals to the Sea of Japan. Its mineral
wealth makes it potentially the richest resource area on earth. But ''not
everything that counts can be counted,'' as Einstein once remarked, and
after the geologist and the geographer have exhausted their estimation of
its dimensions in numerical wonder, there remains its human heart. When the
Russians first arrived, Siberia (like aboriginal America) already had a
diverse life and culture of its own, and it is the idea of Anna Reid's
captivating new book, ''The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia,''
to explore the impact of the Russian conquest on that aboriginal culture's
fate.
A former Kiev correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph, Reid
is no ordinary journalist. As in her previous book, ''Borderland: A Journey
Through the History of the Ukraine,'' she sets out on her travels
determined to bring the land of her reckoning alive. In this she is aided
by her acute curiosity, fine descriptive gifts and delight in detail. The
result is almost always to give us, in her own wry way, an indelible sense
of place.
Consider, for example, her description of flying from Moscow to Tobolsk:
''The in-flight movie . . . was 'Some Like It Hot,' accompanied by rye
bread, cucumber and soapy mineral water, served on battered aluminum trays.
The Tupolev's engines kept up a homely rumble, and the sun sparkled on the
scratches on the windowpanes. As we came in to land, no bossy loudspeaker
said to belt up or stow bags in overhead lockers, the unoccupied seats
flopped forward in unison and a canteen of cutlery jingled down the center
aisle. On the runway our baggage tumbled onto potholed tarmac awash with
meltwater and the cawing of rooks.''
Or, later, her impressions of a voyage in western Siberia: ''The river Ob,
wide, brown, meandering mightily among leafy islets, has cast a spell on
our hydrofoil. On deck men in paint-spattered trousers . . . smoke in
silence, shifting only to point out the rise of a fish or the current's
churn past a tethered buoy. . . . When the engine cuts, sky and water tilt
gently upward, silence washing over us like the floodwater drowning the
willows on either bank. The trees part and a village drifts alongside,
strung along a low scarp of soft brown earth. Then the cabins and fences
spin away, and we are skimming again between mazy walls of green. It would
be no surprise if parrots flashed out of them, or a hail of arrows.''
Some part of Siberia's vanishing present will always be preserved by words
that attend it with such care. But it is the plight of the indigenous
peoples that is Reid's chief concern. Like other conquering powers, the
Russians insisted on their colonial right to civilize the ''savage'' and
make the wilderness their own. Ultimately, their way was cleared by
slaughter, alcoholism and disease. Reid's account of her own journey --
part history, part travelogue, part excursion through the outback of
Siberian lore -- more or less follows the progress of Russian domination
eastward as the Khant, Buryat, Sakha, Ainu, Chukchi and other peoples are
subdued.
It was not long before some of them were struggling simply to survive. In
1876, for example, there were said to be only about 1,600 Yukaghirs left,
the pitiable remnant of a once-powerful tribe. Here and there, their
ancient burial mounds could still be seen, containing skeletons with bows
and arrows, spears and shamanistic drums, but the descendants of these
mighty warriors had fallen into such indolence and addiction that their
chief delight was a coarse Ukrainian tobacco stretched with dung.
Under the Soviets, the Yukaghirs and other small nomadic groups essentially
disappeared. Stalin, in fact, distrusted all native peoples because they
lacked an ''industrial proletariat,'' the only class to which he could
pretend to relate. But in the parsing of native life, the new categories
did not apply. ''The Small-Numbered Peoples,'' Reid explains, ''possessed
no exploiters and exploited in the Marxist sense. . . . Owning a hundred
deer did not make a man a kulak; prospective sons-in-law working out their
bride-prices were not hired laborers; a shaman was not the same thing as a
priest.'' No matter: it was not the people but the categories that counted,
and collectivization programs proved as devastating to Siberian natives as
to peasants in Ukraine.
The history of their obliteration has since been obliterated -- the erasure
of an erasure, so to speak. In St. Petersburg's State Russian Museum, we
learn, ''the sole evidence of the native Siberians' existence is an
18th-century ivory,'' while the vast collection housed by the Hermitage
contains but a single ''china figurine of an Itelmen girl, one of a series
of 'national types' produced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory in the
1780's.''
Forty years ago, it was still possible to find whole communities of the
Khant, a west Siberian people, where their language was spoken. Today, only
the elderly keep it alive. Though a somewhat primitive tongue (in that it
lacks a capacity for abstraction), it is evocative and vivid, with a poetic
particularity all its own. A photograph, for example, becomes by analogy
''a pool of still water''; a hat, ''a wide-crowned tree that keeps off the
rain.''
Losses of all kinds abound. At Goose Lake, once home to a thriving
monastery, the author goes in search of the head lama and finds him ''in a
cabin in the temple grounds, hiding from his mother, girlfriend and infant
sons behind a newspaper. The wall above his bed was decorated with 3-D
posters, one of kittens in a basket, another of a table laid with Ben Nevis
whiskey and tomatoes sliced to look like flowers.'' The shaman's true power
and knowledge, in exaltation, belong to another book. Here we find it in
its fall.
******
#7
Washington Post
December 15, 2002
Psychiatry's Painful Past Resurfaces in Russian Case
Handling of Chechen Murder Reminds Many of Soviet Political Abuse of Mental
Health System
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
MOSCOW -- The question is not whether Col. Yuri Budanov killed 18-year-old
Elza Kungayeva in a Chechen village on March 27, 2000. He has long since
admitted to that.
But for more than two years, Russia's military justice system has been
paralyzed by the case, unable to decide on Budanov's culpability for a
sensational crime that could undermine the government's pledge to pursue
the brutal Chechen war and its uncertain commitment to stopping the human
rights abuses that have resulted.
Stuck on the matter of Budanov's guilt, the state has turned to a familiar
partner from Soviet times, a psychiatric profession that for decades
followed orders to camouflage political problems behind the opaque curtain
of mental illness. In doing so, however, officials have resurrected
questions about psychiatry's shameful past in the Soviet Union -- and its
highly politicized present.
Twice now, Budanov has been sent for evaluation to Moscow's Serbsky
Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry, a little-changed artifact of
the Soviet system. Earlier this year, a panel at the institute overturned
previous evaluations of Budanov to conclude that he had been temporarily
insane at the time of the killing, and therefore not responsible for his
actions.
That controversial finding has opened a broad evaluation of the Serbsky
Institute's fitness as an independent judge of mental competence. Now, a
showdown on the issue is approaching. On Monday, the court is scheduled to
announce the findings from Budanov's latest psychiatric evaluation --
ordered after the public furor caused by his temporary insanity diagnosis.
The hearing has been repeatedly delayed, most recently because of a
"technical" flaw discovered last month in the paperwork submitted by the
Serbsky Institute, which routinely conducts more than 2,500 court-ordered
evaluations each year.
Meanwhile, the case is awakening ugly memories. For years, Serbsky held
political dissidents in the same wards where Budanov has been kept, dazing
them with psychotropic drugs, subjecting them to fake diagnoses and forcing
them to sit through inquisitions on their sanity whose outcomes had been
predetermined by the KGB.
When the military court first ordered Serbsky to test Budanov, the panel
conducting the inquiry was led by Tamara Pechernikova, the doctor who
condemned poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya for protesting the 1968 Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia. When that evaluation of Budanov was criticized,
the court next appointed a commission that included Georgi Morozov, the
former Serbsky director who had sat on many of the committees that declared
prominent dissidents insane in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Practically nothing has changed. They have no shame at the institute about
their role with the Communists," said Yuri Savenko, head of the Independent
Psychiatric Association of Russia. "They are the same people, and they do
not want to apologize for all their actions in the past."
The first and so far only case of a Russian officer publicly charged with a
crime against a Chechen civilian began when Budanov and his men rushed into
the village of Tangi-Chu late one night. Budanov dragged Kungayeva from her
home, claiming he later killed her in a rage because he believed she was a
sniper. Her family says she was raped and murdered by Budanov in a drunken
rampage.
At first, Budanov was denounced by top military officials and appeared
likely to be quickly condemned in a case that would show the West Russia's
commitment to human rights. But a year later, Defense Minister Sergei
Ivanov said he "felt" for Budanov, and public opinion polls showed huge
margins of support for him.
Before the trial began in February 2001, Budanov had been sent twice for
psychiatric evaluation at military hospitals. Both times he was found
mentally competent. But with the trial at a seeming impasse last year, the
military tribunal turned to the Serbsky Institute.
This May, the institute's findings appeared to offer the state an easy way
out of its dilemma: The panel headed by Pechernikova concluded that Budanov
was temporarily insane at the time of the killing and not responsible for
his actions.
Outcry was swift. Independent psychiatrists such as Savenko wrote scathing
attacks on the medical reasoning behind the evaluation. Serbsky's Soviet
history was resurrected in the press. The report on Budanov, said an
adviser to the Kungayev family, Emil Gushansky, is "a relapse to using
psychiatry as a prostitute."
The military appeared to respond, ordering a last-minute replacement of the
prosecutor. The new prosecutor demanded another evaluation to replace the
one his predecessor had praised. On July 3, the military judge agreed.
But once again, Serbsky's past became the issue, when Morozov, the
institute's longtime Soviet-era director, and two other Serbsky veterans
were named to the commission. To Serbsky's critics, Morozov represented all
that had gone wrong in Soviet psychiatry. "He's a symbolic figure for all
of the abuses," Savenko said in August.
Just a few days later, it was announced that Morozov had quit the Budanov
panel. The new evaluation was completed by Serbsky in late September,
though its findings have yet to be released. The public hearing scheduled
for Monday has already been postponed twice.
Budanov spent more than two months at Serbsky this summer, held behind the
high white wall that separates the institute from a quiet side street in
Moscow's Old Arbat neighborhood. He had pledged in court not to cooperate
with the doctors, but later decided to talk to them.
"A professor spoke to me and asked questions," Budanov later told a Russian
newspaper in answers to written questions. "I told him, if a person had
been to war, later on was in prison, after that at a mental hospital, later
on again in jail, the mental hospital. . . . So I asked him if an ordinary
person could endure all of that. He replied in the negative. I said, 'So I
just live.' "
Budanov and his team say they are convinced the latest Serbsky evaluation
will go against him. But they have also defended Serbsky when its history
is recalled.
"They are still considered to be the best specialists. Why shouldn't we
trust them just because a long time ago they choked somebody? Why should we
look that far back?" said his attorney, Anatoly Mukhin.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize-winning
author, once wrote, "The incarceration of free-thinking healthy people in
madhouses is spiritual murder." In the West, the debate about Soviet misuse
of psychiatry formed a centerpiece of human rights campaigns, eventually
forcing the Soviet Union to withdraw in disgrace from the World Psychiatric
Congress.
Founded in 1921, the Serbsky Institute played a leading role in such
abuses. By the 1960s, Serbsky was famous for pioneering a diagnosis that
complied with the KGB's wishes to condemn mentally healthy dissidents. It
was called "slow-developing schizophrenia," and it provided convenient
evidence of insanity in someone without obvious symptoms. Signs of the
disease included "stubbornness and inflexibility of convictions" and
"reformist delusions."
The Serbsky Institute disavowed the diagnosis after the collapse of the
Soviet Union, saying there was no such disease. There are laws today
protecting the rights of Russia's mental patients and seeming to limit
Serbsky's powers. But critics say the institute has merely evolved to suit
changing times without genuinely reforming.
"The system is the same, the mentality is the same," said Alexander
Podrabinik, a one-time Soviet dissident. In 1977, he wrote "Punitive
Medicine," a secretly distributed work of samizdat documenting the horrors
of the Soviet psychiatric system. For writing the book, he was exiled to
Siberia for five years. Later, he received 31/2 years in prison camp --
because the book was translated into English.
The doctor who testified at his trial was Pechernikova, the same doctor who
headed the first commission on Budanov.
No one knows how many political prisoners passed through the Serbsky
Institute. Podrabinik said his research found as many as 2,000 dissidents
had been sent there between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, while the
institute has admitted to holding only about 400.
Vyacheslav Igrunov, a reformist member of the Russian parliament, remembers
being sent to Serbsky in 1975 after psychiatrists at a hospital in Odessa
found him to be mentally competent. He had been arrested for disseminating
"anti-state" reading material.
"The KGB didn't want to agree with that diagnosis, so they sent me to
Serbsky," he recalled recently. After two months, a Serbsky commission
headed by Pechernikova found him insane.
Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko, who turned against Soviet power after the invasion
of Czechoslovakia, was immortalized in Report 59/S of the Serbsky Institute
in 1969, which determined that he was insane because he "was unshakably
convinced of the rightness of his actions" and twisted by "reformist ideas."
In his prison diary, Grigorenko recounted his time at Serbsky. "Of course,"
he wrote, "if it is only a person who bows submissively before any
arbitrary act of the bureaucrats that is considered a normal Soviet person,
then I am 'abnormal.' I am not capable of such submissiveness, no matter
how or how much I may be beaten up."
The man who headed the panel that evaluated Grigorenko was Morozov.
"It's not right to personalize evil," said Morozov's friend, Alexander
Goffman, a professor of psychiatry. "They were limited at Serbsky and
couldn't do what they wanted to do. All modern psychiatry was forbidden.
They had to stick to official ideology."
The Serbsky Institute's current director, Tatyana Dmitriyeva, has little
patience for revisiting the past.
"I cannot say that all of the dissidents -- 100 percent -- were not
insane," Dmitriyeva said. "Many of them have different psychiatric disorders."
Dmitriyeva has been a fixture at Serbsky since the mid-1970s. In 1990, as
the political winds shifted, she replaced Morozov in the top job. Today,
she seems alternately outraged at and dismissive of the criticism the
Budanov case has stirred up. Speaking in a waiting room off Serbsky's
entrance hall -- she refused to give a reporter permission to enter the
institute -- Dmitriyeva complained repeatedly about inappropriate
"political pressure" on the institute during the Budanov case. But none of
it, she hastened to add, was from the government. It was all from the press
and the public.
As for the dissidents, her view is eerily similar to the logic described by
Grigorenko. Essentially, she said, the dissidents were crazy by Soviet
standards, since only a madman would place his life at such risk by defying
the state.
"There were social standards, norms of behavior," she said. "When a person
walked away from these norms, any person would point and say he's insane.
People reacted [by believing] only an insane person can protest what is
going on in the country."
Today, Serbsky doctors are still validating the insanity of enemies of the
state. This summer, former Russian diplomat Platon Obukhov convicted of
spying for Britain, was found to be mentally ill by Serbsky specialists.
Serbsky also tested captured Chechen warlord Salman Raduyev, finding him
sane despite several head wounds rumored to have affected his thinking.
Alina Vitukhnovskaya's is another example of the kind of case that was
supposed to have disappeared from Serbsky with the end of the Soviet Union.
A young poet with a flair for the controversial, she ran afoul of the
Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, in 1994 and
was charged with drug possession. After six months in jail, she was taken
to Serbsky. "I was terrified," she said recently. "I knew what they did to
political dissidents, their history of cooperating with the KGB."
The first evaluation concluded that she was sane, and Vitukhnovskaya was
sent back to jail for six more months, then released. The Federal Security
Service arrested her again on the drug possession charge two years later,
plus a new charge that she was "acting with the purpose of trying to
destroy the secret service of Russia." Again, she was sent to Serbsky.
To her attorney, Vitukhnovskaya's case and the others he has shepherded
through Serbsky show how little has changed.
"If they didn't tell me it's the Russian Federation now, I wouldn't know
there was any difference at Serbsky Institute from Soviet times," said the
attorney, Karen Nersisyan. "Serbsky is not an organ of medicine. It's an
organ of power."
*******
#8
The Observer (UK)
15 December 2002
Trouble in Tashkent
The West - and particularly the US - seems blind to Uzbekistan's cruel
government
By Nick Cohen
In the middle of October, Craig Murray, our man in Uzbekistan, delivered a
speech which broke with all the established principles of Foreign Office
diplomacy. 'This country,' the brave and honest ambassador told an audience
in Tashkent, 'has made very disappointing progress in moving away from the
dictatorship of the Soviet period ... The major political parties are
banned; Parliament is not subject to democratic election and checks and
balances on the authority of the electorate are lacking. There is worse: we
believe there to be between seven and 10,000 people in detention who we
would consider as political and/or religious prisoners. In many cases they
have been falsely convicted of crimes with which there appears to be no
credible evidence they had any connection.'
The state-censored Uzbek media didn't report his accurate description of
life in the dictatorship. Such news is unfit to use. I would guess that
until 11 September few outsiders would have cared about Murray's
denunciation of the near 100 per cent conviction rate of the state's
prosecutors and the gangsterism of its post-communist elite. (I would also
guess that until 11 September few outsiders would have been able to find
Uzbekistan on a map.)
The 'war' on terrorism changed all that. I was in Washington in January and
saw how events in Uzbekistan pushed delighted conservatives to declare
themselves masters of an 'Empire'. Until then, 'the American Empire' was an
insult. The Right didn't accept the Republic could have become any such
thing. After Osama bin Laden unwittingly turned America from a superpower
into a hyper-power, the men around Bush no longer could or wanted to deny
that an empire was what they had. It was the opening of US bases in
Uzbekistan which forced them to talk plainly. Here were American troops in
a former Soviet Republic in the centre of central Asia and no one - not
Russia, not China - could do anything about it. The world was their
playground.
Uzbekistan represented a new peak for American imperialism but was also a
test of what type of empire the American empire would be. On the level of
realpolitik, the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan suited the West well. The
President, Islam Karimov, was a Soviet apparatchik who found Muslim
fundamentalism a useful justification for repression. Since 1997, his
government has pursued a campaign against Muslims who worship outside the
state-controlled religion. Some were insurgents dedicated to the most
frightening versions of theocracy. But not all.
Alerts from Human Rights Watch give a flavour of how the war against
terrorism became a war against democracy. Elena Urlaeva didn't look like a
potential suicide bomber. She was a member of the Human Rights Society of
Uzbekistan, who protested outside the Ministry of Justice in Tashkent. She
was shipped, Brezhnev style, to a mental hospital and stultified with
drugs. Meanwhile, independent doctors have put their careers and more at
risk by examining the bodies of prisoners who die in custody. One, the
corpse of Muzafar Avazov, had no fingernails and 'bore burns that could
only be caused by immersing him in boiling water'. Neither of the above
stories is exceptional.
For most of the time Karimov seems as much mad as vicious. In October, for
instance, all the billiard halls in Uzbekistan were closed. The national
team was banned from travelling to tournaments and the Uzbek Billiard
Federation was abolished. No law was passed against billiards. One day
Uzbeks could play billiards and the next they couldn't. The Associated
Press said that the word on the streets of Tashkent had it that some
bureaucrat's son had lost big at the table.
What isn't banned is glowing accounts of approval for the regime from the
West. The state media use them to reinforce Karimov's power and dispirit
his opponents. And it is Britain which is providing the greatest comfort,
despite the best efforts of our ambassador.
In May the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will hold its
annual meeting in Tashkent. Clare Short will be in the chair. The charter
of the bank, whose capital is provided by European tax payers, stands out
from those of other international financial institutions because it
instructs the staff to do more good than harm. The bank can only help
'countries committed to and applying the principles of multi-party
democracy, pluralism and market economics'.
The bank will be able to insist on privatisations. The Uzbek elite will go
along with market economics as long as it gets its cut. But Uzbekistan
won't accept multi-party democracy without a fight, and the bank's amoral
directors aren't prepared to start one. What the Economist calls the
European Bank for Repression and Dictatorship is as uncomfortable with
human freedom as its Uzbek friends. Human Rights Watch and civil-liberties
groups from Albania to Tajikistan have begged it to apply pressure. The
timid protesters don't want Europe to cancel the propaganda triumph the
conference will bring and stop supplying public money to a government which
is little more than a crime gang. They merely want the bank to demand that
favours should be conditional on Uzbekistan releasing political prisoners
and freeing the press.
Jean Lemierre, the president of the bank, who, by his own charter's
standards, should be looking for other work, has refused. A few days ago he
was in Uzbekistan and was quoted by the country's lackey media as promising
a 'foreign capital inflow to the region'. Short, to her credit, has
condemned the huge corruption in Uzbekistan, but has refused to impose
conditions in return for aid.
We are 15 months into the 'war' and still have no answer to the question:
Will the American Empire and its European clients be agents of national
liberation or the perpetuators of a status quo which creates mass murderers?
At the moment the European Bank and Clare Short's Department for
International Development are doing precisely what bin Laden would want
them to do. Or as Craig Murray said in words which apply as well to Iraq,
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as Uzbekistan: 'Giving people freedom doesn't
mean that anarchy and instability will follow. Indeed, it is repression
which risks causing resentment, alienation and social tension.'
*******
#9
Moldova seeks end to isolation in president's US excursion
December 15, 2002
AFP
As Moldova's communist President Vladimir Voronin prepares for a landmark
visit to the United States, Chisinau is hailing the end of the impoverished
republic's isolation while the opposition harbour's hopes of US support in
their bid to regain power.
Voronin, whose country has one of the lowest standards of living in Europe,
is due to meet his US counterpart George W. Bush, during the three-day trip
beginning Tuesday, as well as high-ranking State Department and finance
officials, the US State Department said.
"We expect many important issues to be discussed then, including economic
and political reforms and some financial issues," a State Department
official said in Chisinau.
The Moldovan authorities would like to see an increase in US investment and
trade which would boost the former Soviet republic's ailing economy.
Moldova's loan plans with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
are also on the agenda.
Voronin himself was upbeat, confident that the invitation he had received
from Washington "amounts to recognition of our efforts to get Moldova out
of crisis and stabilize our economy."
"The dynamics of our relations provide a good backdrop to this discussion.
Trade between our countries grew by 73 percent this year, and that is a
good start," he said in an interview to the state-owned Nezavisimaya
Moldova daily.
However, Washington was less optimistic on the issue, voicing "concern with
the way laws are observed," the US diplomat said, adding that "Moldova
could do better to attract investors and we are ready to help."
But priority at the talks may be given to the longstanding dispute with
separatists in Moldova's eastern region of Transdniestr, which Voronin has
vowed to resolve by the end of the year.
"The United States is well aware that as long as Moldova has two armies,
two customs, two currencies and is unable to control 450 kilometers of its
borders, there can be no real policy," Voronin said.
The United States would like to see a withdrawal from Transdniestr of
Russian troops who have remained in the eastern region since 1992 when they
helped quell a brief war launched by ethnic Russian separatists seeking
independence from Moldova.
Transdniestr's separatists also have hopes pinned on Voronin's visit,
saying the White House just might "make the Communist president see things
the way they are and begin normal talks," the region's foreign minister
Valery Litskai told AFP.
"We support the official US view that Moldova and Transdniestr should build
a federation ruled by an accord," Litskai said.
He also voiced hope that Voronin's visit would not harm Moldova's ties with
Russia, which has been the republic's chief ally since Voronin's election
in 2001.
Voronin in turn stressed that Moldova only sought to remain in step with
Russia's blooming relations with the United States, saying it was
"unthinkable that we should refrain from this cooperation."
Voronin said he discussed his forthcoming visit with Russia's President
Vladimir Putin who asked him to convey his warmest regards to Bush.
Meanwhile, Moldova's opposition hinted that Washington had invited Voronin
over to take him to task over his poor human rights record, and drew US
attention to Chisinau's persecution of its opponents and the independent
media.
"If the United States is a democratic state, they cannot sit and watch as
Moldova holds a horrifying experiment on building Communism," the radical
Tara daily wrote Friday.
In an appeal to Bush, Moldova's opposition Christian Democrats accused
Voronin of "rudely ignoring PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe) resolutions and violating rights and freedoms of Moldovan citizens."
However, both Voronin and US officials shrugged off the issue, with Voronin
pointing out that he would not be the first Communist leader to visit Bush.
*******
#10
BBC Monitoring
Russian MPs offer divided response to NATO expansion
Source: RTR Russia TV, Moscow, in Russian 1010 gmt 14 Dec 02
The latest edition of Russia TV's "Parliamentary Hour" programme, broadcast
on 14 December, focused on the likely impact of NATO expansion on Russia.
The programme gave four senior MPs from the State Duma the opportunity to
air their views on the prospects for Russia's relationship with NATO.
Opinions ranged from supportive of cooperation, in the case of Konstantin
Kosachev, deputy chairman of the Duma's international affairs committee
from the Fatherland - All Russia faction; to openly hostile, of Gennadiy
Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Vladimir
Lukin, deputy speaker of the Duma and member of the Yabloko faction, and
Lyubov Sliska, first deputy speaker of the Duma and member of the pro-Putin
Unity faction, were the other two members of the panel. The following is
excerpted from the programme, with subheadings inserted editorially:
[Presenter Oleg Vorobyev] Good day! We're in one of the rooms in the State
Duma where parliamentary hearings on the most important defence and
security issues take place, sometimes behind closed doors. But today [14
December], we have gathered in order to discuss the issue of NATO expansion.
Seven new countries recently joined this organization - Slovenia, Slovakia,
Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. And so what we would like
to find out is - at the moment, is NATO our ally or our enemy?
Taking part in our discussion are first deputy speaker of the State Duma
Lyubov Konstantinovna Sliska; leader of the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation faction Gennadiy Andreyevich Zyuganov; the deputy leader of the
Fatherland - All Russia faction, Konstantin Iosifovich Kosachev; and deputy
speaker of the State Duma Vladimir Petrovich Lukin, who represents the
Yabloko faction.
Sliska: NATO neither ally nor enemy but "partner"
Lyubov Konstantinovna, what do you think, at the moment: is NATO our ally
or our enemy?
[Sliska] I would choose a third option - partner.
[Presenter] So what's the difference?
[Sliska] The difference is that, over the last 10 years, let's say, we
haven't particularly sensed that they are either an ally or an enemy, but
the fact that NATO is drawing towards Russia's borders is, of course,
worrying us. And, rather too easily, the NATO leadership hasn't wanted to
pay attention to a great number of formalities, such as the fact that
Latvia has territorial claims against the Russian Federation, and that
human rights aren't being fully observed in Latvia. What also strains
things, of course, is the question of why, if Latvia and NATO have no
intention of threatening Russia, former Soviet military facilities on the
territory of the Baltic states are being modernized.
We would really like an open dialogue.
Zyuganov: NATO "enemies who don't reckon with Russia's interests"
[Presenter] Gennadiy Andreyevich, what's your opinion?
[Zyuganov] I believe that NATO expansion is the greatest mistake in postwar
history. In many ways, this is a criminal decision. First of all, it
cancels out the whole of the world's postwar system, and all the agreements
that had previously been reached.
Russia has been severely weakened, and no-one takes Russia seriously. In
that organization, the very same Luxembourg, and the very same Estonia,
will have the right to veto, and to take part and cast a decisive vote when
issues are under examination. In that mythical 20 [the NATO-Russia
Council], we have no vote, and all we can do is give individual pieces of
advice. The most shocking thing -
[Presenter, interrupts] None the less, are they partners or allies or enemies?
[Zyuganov] Enemies, and enemies who don't reckon with Russia's interests,
enemies who are enlarging their organization, just as Hitler did at one
time. First there was the Anschluss of Austria, then the Sudeten [Germans
in Czechoslovakia], then he gobbled up Poland, and then he unleashed a
major war. And so, if you remember, after 1939 came 1941, and then there
was 1945.
I believe the Americans view those who haven't been admitted into NATO not
as partners, but as vassals.
Kosachev: "Relationship as allies"
[Presenter] Konstantin Iosifovich, what's your point of view - are we
partners, allies, enemies? How should we describe our current relationship
with NATO, and Russia's position in this type of geopolitical situation?
[Kosachev] We know that generals always prepare for victory in wars that
have already taken place, and, in this case, Gennadiy Andreyevich's
position reminds me of just that sort of general, because to believe at
present that NATO is the main threat to Russia's national interests is no
more than a reflection of the attitudes of the Cold War period, which has
been left way back in the past.
In my opinion, it's been a long time since the main threat to Russia's
national security came from the West. The threats come from completely
different regions - Russia's unprotected southern borders, the constant
regional conflicts in Russia's immediate vicinity, by which I mean the
Asian region, the Middle East, and what may potentially ripen into conflict
between India and Pakistan. I think that we will only be able to confront
these new threats, and not in word but in deed, if we construct real
relations as allies with NATO. In order to be allies, like in a tango,
there need to be two of you. And this sort of relationship as allies
undoubtedly requires a re-examination of a series of fundamental
approaches, on the part of both NATO and Russia.
Lukin: Agrees with Kosachev, attacks Zyuganov
[Presenter] Do you agree with that, Vladimir Petrovich?
[Lukin] Oh, I agree more closely with Konstantin Iosifovich, which is
hardly surprising given that both of us are, after all, professionals in
international affairs. By the way, in his comments, Gennadiy Andreyevich
very clearly outlined the position which belongs to what I would call the
more inert section of our society, which isn't surprising - I can
understand that.
In general terms, as Heraclitus once said, things that diverge come
together. The sort of radical conservative position which the respected
Gennadiy Andreyevich put forward converges with the most radical position.
Why? Well, he said that we don't have any voting rights in this new
organization, in this new structure, in the 20. Quite right - we don't.
What do we need to have rights? What do we need to do in order to have them
[the voting rights]? Enter into NATO. And so, in actual fact, he's in
favour of Russia's entry into NATO, if I understood him correctly, so that
Russia can have voting rights. I wouldn't be against that.
And, you know, the greatest paradox is that the USA, despite its current
relationship with us, would be in favour of this, in the final analysis.
But who would object? It would be these small states, which are still
lagging behind in terms of the postwar system, and are entering into NATO
in order to protect themselves from Russia. And who would meet them there?
They would be met by Russia, which would be sitting in its chair between
two NATO states, and which would address all the issues if there were any.
There just aren't any there at the moment.
Zyuganov: Blasts NATO, upbraids USA
[Presenter] Well, Gennadiy Andreyevich would like to respond.
[Zyuganov] Well, first of all, I confirm that I am not a general, but a
soldier of Russia, and I will serve here with good faith and fidelity. I
have served in the army on three occasions. I served in Germany. I
protected the corridors along which we travelled into Berlin from West
Germany. I know the operational situation well.
NATO expansion cancels out all the results of World War II. That would mean
that 27 million of our compatriots and grandfathers, who laid down their
lives in order to liberate their country and Europe, have been betrayed and
sold.
The appearance of NATO military facilities in the Baltic states would
cancel out the whole of the Petrine period [the reign of Peter the Great].
He spent 20 years hacking out that window [onto Europe]. This would mean
cancelling out the whole of Catherine the Great's period, and the conquests
of [celebrated Russian army generals] Potemkin and Suvorov, when the Little
Russians were defending their own national interests.
We are being pushed out into a cold continent, and they are suggesting that
we fight the Arabs and the Islamic world, and there are 1.3bn of them. We
have 40m of our own, in traditional areas of Muslim worship. And, for the
future, they suggest that we become a trolley, an oil pipeline, and provide
special forces for a new struggle against China, or somewhere else.
The Americans have now said that everything lies in their area of vital
interests. They're now ready to launch a war in Iraq, which would mean a
major war not against Iraq, but against Russia, whose economy can be
brought tumbling if the oil fields of Iraq, and, God forbid, Saudi Arabia
are seized. They would also dictate terms to the whole of Europe.
[Lukin] The problem here is that this has got nothing to do with NATO. As
we know, two of NATO's pivotal members, France and Germany, are adopting
positions which are diametrically opposed to the US position. What's NATO
got to do with this? We're talking about NATO.
[Zyuganov] Two of NATO's countries are bombing Iraq every day.
[Lukin] Understood - two for, and two against.
[Zyuganov] If the Americans capture the oil, and then tomorrow lower the
price from 25 dollars per barrel to 15 dollars, and they could do that in a
jiffy, the Russian economy would collapse within three months.
[Sliska] The Russian economy won't collapse from that. Could I ask Gennadiy
Andreyevich Zyuganov a question? What could he [Zyuganov] do in order to
stop NATO pushing eastward?
[Zyuganov] That's a good question.
[Sliska] But just give us a short answer, because you're dragging out this
discussion, as if you were telling us your whole life story.
[Zyuganov] If we hadn't supported Gorbachev and Yeltsin, this would have
been sorted out with a sub-machine-gun. We liberated Europe - we were there
for almost 50 years. We would have said that we were raising the flag, and
that we were going to leave all the garrisons over the next three years. In
order to do that, we need to sort out A, B, C and D. And we ask you to sign
just one clause - that, after we leave the territory which we liberated
from fascism, none of those states take part in any military bloc, and none
of them threaten us.
I assure you: then they would all have signed word for word. They were
dreaming that our army would leave.
[Sliska] But that didn't happen, Gennadiy Andreyevich. What can we do now?
[Zyuganov] The same thing could have been done in the Baltic states. They
were all being chucked out, and now they're spreading their hands in
helplessness and asking what is to be done...
I'd like you to show this close up [shows a report to the camera - the
front page reads: Pavel K. Bayev - Russia in 2015 - Could the Former
Super-Power Turn into a Battle-Ground?]. I gave this to Vladimir
Vladimirovich [presumably Putin] along with a letter.
This is a strategy devised by NATO institutes, and it views Russia as a
potential enemy. You can open up sections of it which show that, if
disorder breaks out in our country, it's very easy to organize it. It's
just a matter of [national grid chief Anatoliy] Chubays switching off a few
facilities in the cold of winter, and the unrest will break out, and they
will start seizing the facilities they consider to be the most dangerous -
nuclear ones and others as well.
It sets out the scenario in detail. I wasn't the one who wrote it. It was
written at a Norwegian institute, which is under NATO's aegis and is
dealing with this.
[Presenter] Is this a new document?
[Zyuganov] This is a new, very recent document.
Kosachev: "No new immediate military threats" with NATO expansion
[Presenter] And now to Konstantin Iosifovich. I would like to ask you:
after all, NATO really is a military structure, and it would seem to have
military plans for all of life's eventualities -
[Zyuganov] Yes, you said the right thing - for all of life's eventualities.
[Presenter] For all of life's eventualities. In this situation, how should
Russia behave, and what can we do in order to, let's say, break the barrier
of distrust?
[Kosachev] Well, first of all, I would propose that we return to the topic
of our discussion. Today, we're discussing NATO. We're not discussing the
position of individual research institutes. The position of this
organization certainly hasn't been approved and accepted as part of the
[NATO] programme of action. This is an improper reference on the part of
Gennadiy Andreyevich. And we're certainly not discussing the US position
here, because the US position - those times have also been left in the past
- the position of NATO, thank God, is not symmetrical, and we are happily
becoming convinced, time and time again, that, within the framework of
NATO, Europe is acquiring increasing independence, and its voice is being
heard more and more in times of crisis. And that, in my opinion, is a very
healthy basis for our relationship with the alliance.
I am convinced that, at the moment, NATO is rapidly moving towards
intra-organizational collapse. And, in fact, the USA came to understand
this a lot sooner than many other NATO states. Since 11 September, it is as
if all the USA's objections and inflated demands have dissolved in the air.
Now, a considerable wave of expansion has taken place, and I am getting the
impression that the USA has quite simply given up on NATO's possibilities,
and has no intention of making real use of it in its foreign policy actions.
I believe that NATO's expansion poses Russia no new immediate military
threats - military, I stress - but for one exception. There is the Treaty
on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe [CFE], and until new states and
members of the alliance, and the Baltic states in particular, join this
treaty, there will indeed be a so-called grey zone in the immediate
vicinity of Russia's borders, where we would be fulfilling our obligations
on flank restrictions on conventional armed forces - tanks, aircraft,
combat helicopters, artillery, armoured equipment - while our neighbours on
the other side of the border could, purely in theory, withdraw from these
restrictions.
To be honest, I believe that this situation of stagnation won't last long,
because it's a lot more important for the NATO leadership and the USA to
have a normal relationship with Russia than to provoke a crisis by
deploying an additional quantity of tanks on the territory of the Baltic
states.
And so Russia is quite right in firmly raising the issue that the Baltic
states must join the regime of the CFE Treaty, but I hope that this won't
lead to so serious a crisis.
[Presenter] So a solution to this problem is a realistic possibility?
[Sliska] It's realistic.
[Kosachev] Finding a solution to this problem is realistic, and I think it
will happen in the coming months.
[Lukin] Within two months of the Baltic states officially joining NATO,
they will definitely enter into the CFE Treaty. But I would just want to
add that the Baltic states are the Baltic states. After all, however much
you inflate a hare, you won't turn it into a bear, you see. Their armies
have 500 people, 300 people, and, if there is any sort of increase
connected to NATO, it will be a similar number again. And that ignores the
fact that this wouldn't make any sense, because Russia is a nuclear
country, and only if someone has a superhuman imagination can he believe
that one of the Baltic states, whether they have NATO's help or not, would
start waging war against Russia, while believing that Russia wouldn't
react. In one way, Russia remains the same as the Soviet Union, and that is
as a major nuclear power. And no-one would raise a hand - neither NATO nor
the USA would do anything.
[Zyuganov] With that sort of policy, soon we won't even be a nuclear power.
I'd just like to add something on the subject of inflated hares.
In two rounds of admission, NATO's aviation potential alone has increased
by 1,000 units. For next year, and Konstantin won't let me lie, the budget
for our military aviation contains orders for one aircraft and not even a
single helicopter.
[Sliska] I support Konstantin Iosifovich, in the sense that the USA has
long since understood that NATO is the sort of structure where you can't
reach decisions quickly. It really does require a major transformation.
They acknowledge that, and, as far as the CFE Treaty is concerned, when the
seven countries were accepted as members in Prague - in other words, they
received official invitations - it [NATO] said that they must join this
treaty. And this is already prescribed there. Vladimir Petrovich was right
to say that, within two or three months, this will be a compulsory
procedure for all seven participant countries.
[Kosachev] We have now touched upon the issue of budget funding. This
really is an issue which matters to us as parliamentarians. It's no secret
that the Russian budget's ability to finance its military expenditure is
extremely limited, whether we like it or not. And it is my deeply held
belief that the only conclusion one can reach from this is that this
expenditure must be planned with the utmost intelligence. At the moment, we
can't afford the luxury of all-round defence, irrespective of the real
threat which we face from one direction or another.
It seems to me that those resources which Russia has within the budget must
be used in order to address tasks such as illegal immigration,
strengthening the southern borders, demarcating borders in those areas
where this is yet to be done, arranging cooperation in the fight against
terrorism, which we have already spoken about at length, organizing those
servicemen who actually perform the most important missions in protecting
the borders of the Russian Federation.
Zyuganov: Russia NATO's "cannon fodder"
[Presenter] A recent survey of public opinion [word indistinct] in 2002
yielded some interesting results. Sixty per cent of Europeans surveyed said
they were in favour of Russia's entry into NATO, while, in the USA, 68 per
cent of Americans said they were in favour. So we're viewed not as an
enemy, but as an ally. That surprised the Europeans and the Americans
themselves, but, nonetheless, it remains a fact. How would you comment on
the results of this survey?
[Zyuganov] They look upon us as cannon fodder, cheap labour and one big
quarry - I've already mentioned this. As far as American colonels go, if
they were to hear that they're no longer in NATO, they would quite simply
be incensed. But they're sitting in Tbilisi, in Central Asia, although they
will leave Afghanistan. But they will remain in Central Asia, the Baltic
states and the Caucasus, and you won't be able to flush them out with a stick.
Lukin: NATO "falling apart"
[Lukin] You see, the whole time while we're talking - and that's Gennadiy
Andreyevich, in particular - it's not clear what he's talking about. What,
that the West is bad? Or are we talking about NATO? That they'll drive us
into the plantations and use us as labour? I don't think you mean NATO. You
mean the bad, horrible, nasty West, one that isn't very clearly defined...
I would say this to you: if they really did want to use our workforce, they
would have made investments, because the corresponding enterprises over
here would have been a lot cheaper and would have produced quality goods.
But, in actual fact, they're investing in China.
But if we're talking about NATO, then a very normal story is being played
out. NATO is falling apart. NATO doesn't have a mission. This isn't because
every single NATO gun is falling apart -
[Zyuganov] How did you come up with the idea that NATO is falling apart?
[Lukin] Well, first of all because -
[Zyuganov] After all, it's expanding!
[Lukin] But at the same time NATO has reduced its military power by more
than a third over the last few years. Second, because, whenever something
expands, it starts falling apart, starting with the Roman Empire and ending
with the Soviet Union, apologies for the expression. So there. That is why -
[Presenter] An interesting point of view.
[Lukin] That is why - it is not just interesting, it is a historical point
of view.
[Zyuganov] You are just trying to lull us into a false sense of security.
Sliska: Policy of engagement
[Sliska] Various points of view on NATO expansion can be offered. However,
we cannot influence the wish of a state to choose for itself a system of
national security. Indeed, the Baltic states have made their choice. They
have now, in effect, already been invited to join NATO. Our mission,
really, is now to oblige everyone to join the CFE Treaty, which is what is
now being pursued by the Russian State Duma, and our diplomats, who are
also working to achieve that.
If, on the other hand, all we did was criticize NATO all the time, as of
old, to the effect that it is an enemy, public opinion would continue to be
formed on the lines that never can agreement be reached with anyone on
anything.
In July this year, I was in Italy. I very much liked what Giulio Andreotti
said. As a Russian citizen, you know, it was music to my ears. He said: Why
do we need NATO at all? After all, the Warsaw Pact has been disbanded. So
let us disband NATO. That was what an Italian said.
So, for that to happen, we must do some serious work in that direction, so
as to prove this point: Is there any need for such a military-political
structure as NATO, what will it give us and what will it not give us? The
fact that some things have become apparent on the minus side, to some
extent we view it as normal. On the other hand, given that we have now
adopted [the principle of] European security, and have all become in favour
of the preservation of that European security, will NATO's sluggishness not
harm us, too?
So here, too, points of view to be discussed could be diametrically opposed
to each other. And were we to invite to the studio four more
representatives of our groups of deputies, the opinions that would emerge
would again be very different.
So I believe that the aim is that any treaties and any talks are always
more productive than criticism alone.
Kosachev: No nuclear deployment in NATO's new member states
[Kosachev] The Russian Federation's defence doctrine is clear on this
point: We defend our territory, our country with reliance on strategic
nuclear forces. That is the foundation of our defence. With all
responsibility, I can tell you that when NATO adopted its strategy of
expansion eastwards at the beginning of the 1990s, in 1993 to be more
precise, it was written down in black on white that NATO shall abide by
unilateral voluntary limitations and shall, without any coordination with
Russia and anybody else, not deploy nuclear weapons or means of its
delivery on the territory of its new member states. Nobody has reneged on
those limitations. So there'll be no new nuclear weapons or strategic
bombers on the territory of its new member states, be it the first wave -
the Poles, the Czechs and the Hungarians - or a future wave. If there are
any, that will constitute a breach of NATO's own decisions and the spirit
of cooperation that is undoubtedly now manifest between Russia and the USA.
So, from the viewpoint of the national security of the Russian Federation,
let me repeat again, NATO expansion does not pose any new threats. Forgive
me but I absolutely do not seriously consider the deployment of any
additional number of tanks in the Baltic states to be a threat to Russia's
national security.
[Zyuganov] I again want to -
[Kosachev] Gennadiy Andreyevich, as for you, I -
[Zyuganov] I don't want him to confuse our viewers, particularly from
within the State Duma.
[Presenter] In what way, though, does he contribute to confusion?
[Zyuganov] Just a minute.
[Kosachev] Gennadiy Andreyevich, as for you, I could -
[Zyuganov] In this world, and in a theatre of war, one recognizes the
number of tanks, ammunition, precision weapons, the operational situation,
geography and many more like things. But the rest is nonsense. You will do
well to remember that. Any military man who has taken part in any, however
small, conflict, knows that.
The USA's SDI [Strategic Defence Initiative] system is ready today. It can
incapacitate our group of satellites. Today, two small needles can be
thrown to pierce a porthole, and render you deaf, blind and unable to
launch any of your missiles from any of your silos. Those preparations are
nearing completion. Tomorrow, NATO's hordes, if deployed and even if armed
conventionally, would get you just like that.
Zyuganov: Dialogue with Europe
[Presenter] To listen to you, one is disheartened. We really have no way
out and no chance of survival.
[Zyuganov] There is a way out allright. To be in contact with all power
centres, with Europe. I am in favour of the best relations possible with
Europe, where neither Germany nor France want an even stronger America.
[Lukin] NATO's members, NATO's members, -
[Zyuganov] They don't want it to become stronger. After the bombing of
Yugoslavia, the euro shed 25 per cent of its value. In the four years, it
has barely recovered. They categorically do not want that. And that should
be taken advantage of.
[Presenter] However, whether we wanted it or not, NATO has expanded, It has
now become reality. How can Russia use - and benefit from - the fact that
is NATO's expansion? What can we gain from cooperation with NATO?...
Sliska: Russia's "niche"
[Sliska] Russia, with its territory, so vast, and its military potential,
so considerable, is not yet needed in NATO. Let us not labour under any
misapprehensions or fool ourselves here. Russia is an independent, major
power, to be reckoned with. The result of Putin's activities in the
international arena in the past three years has been that the attitude to
Russia has become fundamentally different. It can be felt even during those
visits at which we are now present and hold talks.
So I would not like us now either to seek benefit from or harm in it. Time
will show. A mere five months has passed since a new format, the
Russia-NATO Council, came into being. Since 11 September, little more than
a year has passed and no real results have been seen, either. So what
Russia should do now is precisely to occupy that niche where something has
been left undone or has not gone beyond declarations, and fill in the gaps
there. Russia has the opportunity to do so, and should not miss it. That is
the task of all our agencies without exception.
Lukin: Balance between USA, EU
[Lukin] I would say that the main issue is that we have to find the right
relationship between America and Europe.
Contrary to what may seem to be the case at first glance, Britain's
leadership is not so silly. They are trying to manoeuvre between
continental Europe and America, and sometimes - as a result - they rise to
positions in the world that are greater than anything Britain could achieve
otherwise.
Perhaps, Russia ought to look at that point of view closely. In some
things, we should be with America and work with it when it suits us, for
example in Afghanistan, where we have put up a barrier with the help of the
Americans, a barrier to a Taleban attack on Central Asia, which really
would be very bad news for us. Sometimes, strategically, we should work
more with Europe, to contain America, whose policies are in reality far
from sweet. I mean precisely America, rather than NATO. The former reminds
me of a young lad with bulged biceps who can, if he so wants, take action
unilaterally without regard for anyone else. It should be contained, but
contained in a subtle way. And it can only be contained if we are part of
the system. If we are outside the system, we shall not be able to do anything.
Kosachev: Warning to Russia against return to Cold War
[Kosachev] NATO, again whether we like it or not, is effectively the whole
of Europe. At any rate, soon it will be most European states. And if we
were knowingly to place ourselves in a situation where we remained hostile
to the whole of Europe, the consequences of that for Russia would be most
lugubrious. The result of that would be that we would not be able to supply
it with energy, as we plan to do with gas and oil, which is now under
discussion. Those restrictions on Russia that are still in place in the EU
would, in that case, stay. We would not be able to supply it with consumer
goods, as we would continue to suffer the press of sanctions, as an enemy.
And, paradoxical as it may sound, we would once and for all be deprived of
the possibility to preserve military-technical cooperation with European
states.
So, if we now try to kick NATO and return ourselves to the times of the
Cold War - and in the studio just now the times of the Cold War all but
came back - we shall hoist ourselves with our own petard big-time, which
will be felt in the future by our industry in its development, and Russia's
military-industrial complex as it seeks to establish and further strengthen
itself.
Zyuganov: Cooperation with NATO "will not be successful"
[Zyuganov] Let me answer that. As you understand, here he more condemns me
than NATO. NATO is the USA's military fist with which to impose its diktat.
Those who don't realize that will see the whole scenario in the next two to
three years. In this case, the USA does not always listen to its European
allies.
If all of the planet's resources are divided per capita, in Russia the
ratio is 160,000 dollars, in Europe it is six - only six - and in the USA
it is 16. For so long as this ratio remains, Europe will continue to reckon
with Russia, and we should develop good all-sided relations with it. I
don't want and don't intend to fall out with the USA, but it will listen to
no-one today. Not properly, anywhere in the world. We should energetically
develop our relations with China and India. With India in particular, we
have never had any problems. Nor have we ever in our history warred with
Arab states. That is why, pursue a different policy, form a strong
government and run the country as it should be run. Then, no doubt, you
will be reckoned with.
[Presenter] And yet, Gennadiy Andreyevich, can we still derive some benefit
from cooperation with NATO?
[Zyuganov] Our cooperation with NATO will not be successful. The only
benefit to be derived from it will be for them, that they will use us in
all the hot spots and, in the short term, conflicts.
Lukin: Russia's democratic development
[Presenter] And my last question, which concerns the role of the Duma. What
position should the State Duma take, what can it do in the situation, in
order to raise Russia's profile in the international arena and, above all
else, in the relationship with NATO?
[Lukin] First of all, first of all, and as regards the strategy I have just
outlined, a highly important precondition is for Russia to be a democracy;
for parliament in Russia not only to be called parliament, but for it to be
just that; for there to be independent courts in Russia not only because
that's what they are called - independent - but for them to be independent;
for the leadership of Russia to be truly strong and for an executive
vertical truly to exist, when the executive decisions of the centre reach
every region and every locale, but for it at the same time to be
controllable. So if all that is in place, then Russia will be able to form
part of what could be termed the Euro-Atlantic community, which is
developing faster than any other community and which is joining the 21st
century more quickly. If that is not in place, Russia will not form part of
that community and, therefore, will not be a dynamic developer.
Kosachev: Economic self-sufficiency
[Kosachev] I believe that Russia will take its due place in the
international community, one that befits it, only when it becomes
self-sufficient economically, when we are no longer dependent on foreign
loans. It is only then that Russia will be able to be on equal terms both
with the USA and NATO, and all the other states, attempt as they might to
adopt a superior attitude towards Russia. It is only in that way, and not
by military means, that Russia will be able to secure the place that
rightfully belongs to it.
Sliska: Balance
[Sliska] What I would like is for the Russian parliament always to express
the interests of the state, and for those interests never to be criticized.
Let us criticize them here, internally, but not there, publicly, as is done
today - what is good and what is bad here.
Let me repeat my question to Gennadiy Andreyevich. He may choose not to
answer it. Why did he refuse to become president in 1996? After all, back
then you clearly won a victory. It was recognized. You, however, did not
want to become president. That means that, in some way, you feared
responsibility. There is documentary information to that effect. You,
however, chose not to fight for that post to the end. You knew that you had
won a victory then. A victory. But, Gennadiy Andreyevich -
[Zyuganov] That one is below the belt.
[Sliska] Gennadiy Andreyevich, that is not below the belt.
[Zyuganov] Six years ago, you kept silent. Why is it that you mention it
only now?
[Sliska] Not so. I did not keep silent. I knew what the situation was. You,
too, knew.
[Zyuganov] You kept silent.
[Sliska] But you chose then not to fight even for yourself. Now, however,
you lambast the government, you lambast the president, although, forgive
me, in a comparably short period of time no secretary-general of the CPSU
Central Committee managed to achieve the degree of influence in the world
that the current president and the current government have achieved.
[Presenter] However, back to the subject of the State Duma. What can be done?
[Sliska] I think that, here, our position should be balanced, once again.
Above all else, it should be balanced. No sudden movement is allowed. All
that does is irritate our partners. As much as possible, everything should
be built on trust. But, as the Russians say, trust but check. In absolutely
everything, Russia's interests must take precedence. It is not all that
difficult to seek to secure them by any diplomatic means.
[Presenter] Perhaps, what our discussion has shown is that, in any event,
Russia should assess the geopolitical reality of the day and build new
policy in a constructive and well-thought-out way, to ensure that we are
reckoned with as a great power and that our interests are taken into
account, including in the regions that have now come to be in NATO's sphere
of influence. Thank you for taking part in our discussion. It is now time
to end our programme. Good bye and all the best.
******
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