Johnson's Russia List
#7143
13 April 2003
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. The Electronic Telegraph (UK): David Harrison, Revealed: Russia spied
on Blair
for Saddam.
2. AP: Russia Concerned on Conditions in Iraq.
3. San Francisco Chronicle: Robert Collier and Bill Wallace, Iraq-Russia
spy link
uncovered. SECRET FILES: Documents reveal Iraqi agents trained in Moscow.
4. AFP: Russia hints "peace camp" alliance with Germany and France is dying.
5. Reuters: Russia ministers says Moscow won't drop Iraq debt.
6. Reuters: Russia aide--No serious talk of Iraq debt write-off.(Illarionov)
7. Moskovskiye Novosti: Russian Writer Vasiliy Aksenov Questions US
Motives in
Iraq War.
8. BBC Monitoring: Russian General Staff "delaying" with military reform -
newspaper.
9. Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Russia Commission Head on Electoral System Reform,
Party
Funding, Media Coverage. (Aleksandr Veshnyakov)
10. Los Angeles Times: Robyn Dixon, Harry Potter Battles Attack of the
Clones.
'Tanya Grotter' is his counterpart in Russia, where plagiarism charges are
shrugged
off by nearly everyone in the literary world.
11. Washington Post: Linda Hales, The Hermitage, Out to Recapture Lost
Age, Works.]
********
#1
The Electronic Telegraph (UK)
April 13, 2003
Revealed: Russia spied on Blair for Saddam
By David Harrison
Top secret documents obtained by The Telegraph in Baghdad show that Russia
provided Saddam Hussein's regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months
leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations
between Tony Blair and other Western leaders.
Moscow also provided Saddam with lists of assassins available for "hits" in
the West and details of arms deals to neighbouring countries. The two
countries also signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to
"obtain" visas for agents to go to other countries and to exchange
information on the activities of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qa'eda leader.
The documents detailing the extent of the links between Russia and Saddam
were obtained from the heavily bombed headquarters of the Iraqi
intelligence service in Baghdad yesterday.
The sprawling complex, which for years struck fear into Iraqis, has been
the target of looters and ordinary Iraqis searching for information about
relatives who disappeared during Saddam's rule.
The documents, in Arabic, are mostly intelligence reports from anonymous
agents and from the Iraqi embassy in Moscow. Tony Blair is referred to in a
report dated March 5, 2002 and marked: "Subject - SECRET." In the letter,
an Iraqi intelligence official explains that a Russian colleague had passed
him details of a private conversation between Mr Blair and Silvio
Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, at a meeting in Rome. The two had
met for an annual summit on February 15, 2002, in Rome.
The document says that Mr Blair "referred to the negative things decided by
the United States over Baghdad". It adds that Mr Blair refused to engage in
any military action in Iraq at that time because British forces were still
in Afghanistan and that nothing could be done until after the new Kabul
government had been set up.
It is not known how the Russians obtained such potentially sensitive
information, but the revelation that Moscow passed it on to Baghdad is
likely to have a devastating effect on relations between Britain and Russia
and come as a personal blow to Mr Blair. The Prime Minister declared a "new
era" in relations with President Putin when they met in Moscow in October
2001 in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks.
In spite of warnings by the British intelligence and security services of
increasing Russian espionage in the West, Mr Blair fostered closer
relations with Mr Putin, visiting his family dacha near Moscow, supporting
the Russians in their war in Chechnya, and arranging for the Russian
president to have tea with the Queen.
Mr Blair was surprised and dismayed when Mr Putin joined France in
threatening to veto the American and British resolution on Iraq in the UN,
but continued to differentiate between President Putin and President
Jacques Chirac.
The Prime Minister refused to join the French, German and Russian leaders
in their summit on Iraq this weekend, but still regarded Mr Putin as an
ally in global politics.
The list of assassins is referred to in a paper dated November 27, 2000. In
it, an agent signing himself "SAB" says that the Russians have passed him a
detailed list of killers. The letter does not describe any assignments that
the assassins might be given but it indicates just how much Moscow was
prepared to share with Baghdad. Another document, dated March 12, 2002,
appears to confirm that Saddam had developed, or was developing nuclear
weapons. The Russians warned Baghdad that if it refused to comply with the
United Nations then that would give the United States "a cause to destroy
any nuclear weapons".
A letter from the Iraqi embassy in Moscow shows that Russia kept Iraq
informed about its arms deals with other countries in the Middle East.
Correspondence, dated January 27, 2000, informed Baghdad that in 1999 Syria
bought rockets from Russia in two separate batches valued at $65 million
(£41 million) and $73 million (£46 million). It also says that Egypt bought
surface-to-air missiles from Russia and that Kuwait - Saddam's old enemy -
wanted to buy Russian arms to the value of $1 billion. The Russians also
informed Iraq that China had bought military aircraft from Russia and
Israel at the end of 1999.
Moscow also passed on information of Russians who could help Iraqi
politicians obtain visas to go to many Western countries.
The name of Osama bin Laden appears in a number of Russian reports. Several
give details of his support for the rebels in Chechnya. They say bin Laden
had built two training camps in Afghanistan, near the Iranian border, to
train mujahideen fighters for Russia's rebel republic. The camps could each
hold 300 fighters, who were all funded by bin Laden.
Training materials found at the complex give insight into the Iraqi
intelligence gathering methods. One certificate shows that a Rashid Jassim
had passed an advance course in lock-picking.
Other papers found at the headquarters include reports on the succession in
Saudi Arabia and on US-Yemen relations.
The intimate relationship between Baghdad and Moscow is further illustrated
by copies of Christmas cards - in the Christian tradition - sent by Taher
Jalil Habosh, the head of the Iraqi intelligence service, to his Kremlin
counterpart.
Russia has been a key ally of Baghdad since the 1970s and was one of
Saddam's main arms suppliers. The Iraqis are understood to owe Moscow more
than £8 billion for arms shipments. Russian oil companies had longed to
forge links with Saddam Hussein to help develop Iraq's vast oil reserves.
*******
#2
Russia Concerned on Conditions in Iraq
April 13, 2003
By STEVE GUTTERMAN
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia expressed ``growing concern'' Sunday about the
humanitarian situation in Iraq and emphasized that it is up to the
``occupying forces'' to take care of the needs of the country's people.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said the U.S.-led forces
also are responsible for protecting Iraq's cultural, historical and
religious artifacts and sites - and Russia shares UNESCO's concern about
the fate of such treasures.
The head of the U.N. cultural agency on Saturday urged American officials
to send troops to protect what was left of the Iraq National Museum's
collection after a two-day pillage, and said the military should step in to
stop looting and destruction at other key cultural sites.
Also Sunday, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, declined to
comment on reports that Russia provided Saddam Hussein's government with
intelligence information in the months before the war.
The Sunday Telegraph of London reported that it had obtained documents in
Baghdad showing that Russia provided Iraq with assistance that included
intelligence on private conversations between British Prime Minister Tony
Blair and other Western leaders.
The newspaper also said the secret documents showed that Moscow provided
Saddam with ``lists of assassins available for 'hits' in the West'' and
details of its arms deals with countries near Iraq.
Without mentioning the Telegraph, the Interfax news agency quoted chief SVR
spokesman Boris Labusov saying that the agency does not comment on
unsubstantiated reports in ``boulevard publications'' - a phrase used to
express disrespect.
At the same time, Interfax quoted what it called an expert close to
Russia's intelligence services, whose comments appeared aimed to cast doubt
on the reports. The government sometimes uses anonymous statements to
Russian news agencies to express an official position or make a point.
The unnamed source suggested there was nothing sinister about intelligence
ties between Russia and other countries, saying the SVR established
partnerships with foreign agencies over the past decade in part to exchange
information on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, drugs and
terrorism.
The SVR has repeatedly announced that such information exchanges had strict
limits and could not be aimed against third countries, Interfax quoted its
source as saying.
The source also sought to cast doubt on The Sunday Telegraph's report that
in one letter it found, an Iraqi intelligence official explains that a
Russian colleague passed him the details of a private conversation between
Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, apparently in February
2002 in Rome.
The expert said such meetings usually take place one-on-one and asked,
``Which of the two interlocutors in this case is the agent?'' according to
Interfax.
Russia, which was Iraq's strongest supporter in the U.N. Security Council
for years and had close ties with its government, opposes the war.
*******
#3
San Francisco Chronicle
April 13, 2003
Iraq-Russia spy link uncovered
SECRET FILES: Documents reveal Iraqi agents trained in Moscow
Robert Collier, Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writers
Baghdad -- A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence
agents as recently as last September -- at the same time Russia was
resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam
Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show.
The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the
Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents
graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping
techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the
"Special Training Center" in Moscow.
The Russian government, which has expressed intense disagreement with the
U. S.-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly denied giving any military or
security assistance to the Hussein regime. Any such aid would violate U.N.
sanctions that have severely limited trade, military and other relations
with Iraq since 1991.
U.S.-Russian relations have been strained by the split over Iraq. It is
unclear whether these revelations, coming on top of U.S. charges that
Moscow has been supplying other forms of forbidden assistance to Baghdad,
may damage them further.
The U.S. State Department reacted cautiously Friday to the information
unearthed by The Chronicle, saying it could not comment on matters that are
the subject of current intelligence operations.
But Lou Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said the U.S. government has
repeatedly criticized Russian officials for giving assistance to Iraq and
has had recent contacts with the Russian government in which it complained
about the problem.
"We consider this a serious matter and have raised it with senior levels of
the Russian government," Fintor said. "They have repeatedly denied that
they are providing material assistance to Iraq, but we gave them sufficient
information (during the last two contacts) to let them know that we
expected them to take action."
Attempts to contact officials at the consulate for the Russian Federation
in Washington were unsuccessful, and calls to the home of Sergey
Ovsyannikov, the head of the consular division in Washington, went
unanswered.
However, experts in Iraqi and Russian intelligence operations were not
surprised that Mukhabarat officials had received specialized training in
Russia.
"I can't think of anybody in the Iraqi security service that hasn't been
trained in Russia," said Ibrahim Marashi, a research fellow at the Center
for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies.
Details about the Mukhabarat's Russian spy training emerged from some Iraqi
agents' personnel folders, hidden in a back closet in a center for
electronic surveillance located in a four-story mansion in the Mesbah
district, Baghdad's wealthiest neighborhood.
Each personnel file was contained in a thick folder with documents that
reflected the agent's Mukhabarat career.
Three of the five Iraqi agents graduated late last year from a two-week
course in "Phototechnical and Optical Means," given by the Special Training
Center in Moscow, while two graduated from the center's two-week course in
"Acoustic Surveillance Means."
One of the graduating officers, identified in his personnel file as Sami
Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri, 46, is described as being connected to
"the general management of counterintelligence" in the south of the country.
Born in Basra, he joined the Mukhabarat on May 1, 1981, according to his
file. His "party position" -- a possible reference to the ruling Baath
Party --
is listed as "lieutenant general."
His certificate, which bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian
Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, uses a shortened version of
al-Mansouri's name.
It says he entered the Moscow-based Special Training Center's "advanced"
course in "acoustic surveillance means" on Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated on
Sept. 15.
"The studying program has been fulfilled completely and successfully," says
the certificate, which bears an illegible signature of the center's director.
The Chronicle was unable to determine whether the Special Training Center
was a Russian government organization or a privately run facility, though
U.S. analysts said it is unlikely that any private firm could train foreign
intelligence agents in Russia without government permission.
The facility is not mentioned on the official Web site of the Russian
Federal Security Service. The Web site for the Russian Foreign Intelligence
Service was not in operation this weekend.
SECRET POLICE OPERATIONS
The same Mukhabarat office where al-Mansouri's personnel files were found
contained many other documents, including orders for wiretaps and for
break- ins at places ranging from the Iranian Embassy to the five-star
al-Mansour Hotel to doctor's offices.
The documents were only part of a store of espionage paraphernalia
scattered throughout the building, which served as headquarters for a
telephone and electronic surveillance operation that helped Hussein's
regime keep the Iraqi people under tight control.
The Mukhabarat -- formally known as the Da'irat al-Mukhabarat al-Amah, or
General Department of Information -- was formed through the consolidation
of several Iraqi intelligence units in 1973.
According to an analysis by the Monterey Institute, the organization is
divided into three major bureaus that are responsible for political
affairs, regional intelligence and special operations. Last year, experts
estimated that the organization had 8,000 personnel.
Besides spying on the Iraqi people and other nations, the agency operated
clandestine weapons development programs and an arms-smuggling operation.
It reputedly relied on torture and assassination, and was allegedly behind
an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former President George Bush during
a 1993 visit to Kuwait.
LOOTERS UNCOVER SECRETS
The Mukhabarat building, located on a street lined with mansions belonging
to such high-ranking members of Iraq's power structure as Hussein's son
Odai, apparently had been hit by two U.S. missiles that penetrated from the
fourth to second floors but did not explode.
Most of the buildings in the area were broken into and looted by mobs last
week, as U.S. troops occupied main avenues in the district.
The sprawling, four-story Mukhabarat mansion has no sign indicating its
purpose and is not known to the general public. The spy agency's main
headquarters building is about two miles away in the Mansour district on
the other side of the Tigris River.
After the doors of the mansion were battered open Wednesday, nearly
everything that could be removed -- high-tech surveillance gear, bathroom
sinks and even staircase bannisters -- was ripped out and hauled away by
crowds of Baghdadis who swarmed through Mesbah and other districts, looting
and pillaging.
The impressive yet bewildering variety of functions of the Mukhabarat was
on view throughout the four-story mansion.
In the basement was a metal workshop with several large lathes and milling
machines, apparently for making precision tools. Adjacent to the workshop
was a room with a long bank of electronic equipment, apparently for taping
and listening to wiretaps.
On the ground floor was a workshop for making master keys to pick locks.
Upstairs was a workshop for manufacturing and adapting surveillance
transmitters placed in offices and homes.
On tables and in file cabinets were catalogs from companies around the
world -- mainly Germany, Italy and Japan -- that sell such spy equipment as
transmitters hidden in flowerpots, table lamps and clock radios.
In one room was a bank of machines for listening to telephone calls.
Another held a media monitoring center that taped and cataloged
transmissions by Arab television channels.
RUSSIAN-IRAQI TIES
For years, the relations between Iraqi and Russian intelligence services
have been the subject of speculation but little hard information.
In late March, the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that
Russian intelligence agents were holding daily meetings with Iraqis,
possibly with the intent of gaining control of the Mukhabarat archives if
Saddam Hussein's regime fell.
The newspaper said the archives could be highly valuable to Russia in three
major areas: in protecting Russian interests in a postwar Iraq; in
determining the extent to which Hussein's regime may have financed Russian
political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to
intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries.
The close relationship between the two countries is largely economic. Iraq
and Russia are major trading partners, and Russia has billions of dollars
tied up in deals with Iraqi businesses -- including debts Iraq has owed to
the Russians since the Soviet era.
In addition, the two countries were parties to an agreement that gave
Russia a stake in developing new Iraqi oil fields as well as electricity
generation facilities and other types of crucial infrastructure.
Finally, the Iraqis were a major consumer of Russian military equipment and
material before 1991. Most of Iraq's weapons systems are Russian, from its
tanks and missiles to the assault rifles issued to its infantry troops.
Marashi, who has written a detailed study of the Iraqi security apparatus
for the Monterey Institute, said Russia's training of Iraqi intelligence
agents started in 1973.
"That was when the first exchanges were made. The level of cooperation
increased in 1981 after the Israelis bombed the Iraqi nuclear facility,"
Marashi said, referring to Osirak, a French-built atomic power plant
outside Baghdad.
Peter Brookes, who worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before
becoming a national security specialist with the Heritage Foundation think
tank, said he had no specific knowledge of the training program revealed in
the Mukhabarat's personnel files, but said he was not surprised given
Iraq's importance to Russia.
"Russia," he said, "has a lot of interests in that part of the world."
MOSCOW CONNECTION
This certificate - discovered by The Chronicle in a Baghdad office of
Saddam Hussein's secret police - shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer
named Sami Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri successfully completed a course
in acoustic surveillance techniques administered by the Moscow-based
Special Training Center last September. Providing that training would
violate United Nations sanctions that severely have limited trade, military
and other relations with Iraq since 1991. The Russians have consistently
denied violating those sanctions.
[DJ: Text not reproduced here.]
Robert Collier reported from Baghdad and Bill Wallace from San Francisco.
Translations from Arabic documents provided by Jalal Ghazi and Muhammad
Ozeir. / E-mail the writers at rcollier@sfchronicle.com and
bwallace@sfchronicle.com.
*********
#4
Russia hints "peace camp" alliance with Germany and France is dying
April 13, 2003
AFP
A summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French and German
counterparts has been dubbed a failure by some officials here, who warned
the troika's "peace camp" alliance would crumble with the end of the war in
Iraq.
"Senior government officials, speaking in the corridors of power in Moscow,
have no illusions about any long-term perspectives for the axis," the
well-connected Izvestia daily reported in its weekend issue.
"Sooner or later Iraq will fall and Russia and the United Sates will resume
normal relations," the official, who was reported to be close to Putin,
told the paper.
"The situation in Iraq does not mean that we intend to get into an argument
with the United States," said the source before adding that Moscow never
expected "any long-term principled" position concerning Iraq from either
Paris or Berlin.
The comments indicate that Russia's nuanced position over the war in Iraq
is becoming even more difficult to decipher.
Putin is still pushing to protect a nascent friendship with US President
George W. Bush in the face of strident opposition from the Russian media
and top government officials.
Analysts have long argued that Putin is far keener to preserve friendly
ties with the United States than with the pro-European, anti-war camps
embedded in much of the Russian media and the foreign and defense ministries.
Russia's Foreign Minister Ivan Ivanov expressed outrage at suggestions from
a top Pentagon official last week that Moscow should forgive the eight
billion dollars in Soviet-era debt owed to it by Baghdad.
Kommersant business daily joined in by declaring in a furious front-page
headline: "The United States is demanding that Russia, France and Germany
pay for the Iraqi war."
And the popular Gazeta.ru news website stormed: "We should have expected
this!"
Yet Putin has been far more reserved. He and his loyal Finance Minister
Alexei Kudrin suggested Friday that Moscow might be prepared to waiver some
of the Iraqi debts in return for better Russia-US relations.
"On the whole the proposal is understandable and legitimate," Putin said.
"Russia has no objections to such a proposal."
Putin concluded two days of talks in Saint Petersburg with French President
Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Saturday still
calling for a central United Nations role in the post-war revival of Iraq.
But the Saint Petersburg summit ended without any formal declaration on Iraq.
And diplomats noted Putin appeared uncomfortable at being so closely
associated with the anti-Washington stance of Schroeder and Chirac.
Putin had even secretly invited British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- Bush's
staunchest backer in the war on Iraq -- to attend the pow-wow in Saint
Petersburg's Grand Hotel Europe. Diplomats said Blair turned the offer down.
Putin's overtures toward Washington have been complicated by the tough talk
from other Russian officials. But analysts suggested Putin's more measured
approach to the issue could raise the Russian leader's value in
Washington's eyes.
The differences within the Russian administration appear striking. While
Putin took a soft approach during the summit, a senior lawmaker ridiculed
the United States Sunday for failing to find any weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
"We do not think that America won," said Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the
lower house of parliament's foreign affairs committee, told Rossia television.
"Where are those chemical weapons?" he demanded.
And Putin's media aide, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, told Kommersant that Russia
would not forgive the Iraqi debt.
"(Washington) should not be so generous at other people's expense," he said.
*********
#5
Russia ministers says Moscow won't drop Iraq debt
MOSCOW, April 12 (Reuters) - Russia will not forgive Iraq some $8 billion
in Soviet-era debt, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Saturday, a day
after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow could consider wiping clean
Baghdad's slate.
Speaking from Washington where he is taking part in a meeting of finance
ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations, Kudrin
said Moscow would not forgive loans granted to Iraq under Saddam Hussein
until Russia's own Soviet debts were written off.
"No one has forgiven Russia's debt, regardless of what kind of regime it
was and regardless of the country's clout," he told Russian state television.
"For this reason, international law and our membership of the Paris Club of
creditor nations will allow us to press for the repayment of our loans."
Russia inherited some $100 billion in Soviet-era debt. It faces a debt
repayment peak of $17 billion in 2003.
"We are acting on the basis of the same rules here: we are doing what is
being done to us," Kudrin said.
Putin, speaking in St Petersburg at a joint press conference alongside his
French and German counterparts, said on Friday Russia had no objection to a
U.S. proposal that some or all of Iraq's debts be written off to help
rebuild the country.
"On the whole the proposal is understandable and legitimate. In any event,
Russia has no objection to such a proposal," Putin told reporters.
Most estimates put Iraqi debts to Russia and France at about $8 billion
each, mostly for contracts concluded in the 1980s, but some analysts say
Moscow could be owed up to $12 billion.
Germany's Finance Ministry said on Friday Iraq owed Berlin a sum just short
of four billion euros ($4.3 billion).
Germany and France, members of the Paris Club alongside Russia, have given
a cool response to the proposal tabled by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowtiz, saying it is to early to discuss debt.
The Paris Club is an informal forum for 19 creditor nations to discuss
rescheduling debts to developing countries.
Iraq is thought to face some $142 billion in enforceable debt claims as
well as up to $300 billion in reparations outstanding from the invasion of
Kuwait.
*********
#6
Russia aide--No serious talk of Iraq debt write-off
By Anna Willard
WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - No country is seriously talking about
writing off Iraq's debt, an economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir
Putin said on Saturday.
"I haven't heard anybody seriously discussing the possibility of writing
the Iraqi debt off," Andrei Illarionov told Reuters on the sidelines of the
spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings
here.
Illarionov said the Russian position on Iraqi debt is that it should be
addressed through the Paris Club, but said this does not mean it will be
written down.
Russia itself went to the Paris Club of creditors in 1999 after its
economic collapse the previous year, but the country did not get a write
down of its debts, according to the Paris Club website. Instead, the debt
was rescheduled over a 19-year period with a two-year grace period on all
repayments.
On Friday, Putin said Moscow was ready to consider Washington's call for it
to forgive some $8 billion in Soviet-era debt owed to it by Baghdad.
Most estimates put Iraqi debts to Russia and France at about $8 billion
each, mostly for contracts concluded in the 1980s, but some analysts say
Moscow could be owed up to $12 billion. Russia itself faces a debt
repayment peak of $17 billion in 2003.
"The Paris Club is not about writing off, it's not about reduction,"
Illarionov said.
"It's about how particular countries can and should service their debt and
different mechanisms can be used to persuade a country's creditors to do it
in a timely and appropriate manner."
Illarionov also said the Paris Club would have to look closely at Iraq to
decide what help the country might need.
"It is very well known that Iraq is not a less developed country so that
the procedures that would be applied to a lesser developed country can
hardly be applied to Iraq," he said.
Iraq, like Russia, is a major oil producer, with exports a major potential
source of revenue for the shattered country.
The Paris Club has different categories of "terms" that can be applied to a
country's debt.
The most generous terms are known as "Cologne terms" and are given to very
poor countries involved in the heavily indebted poor countries initiative.
These terms do involve a debt write-off, of 90 percent or more on
outstanding debt, the Paris Club website said.
*********
#7
Russian Writer Vasiliy Aksenov Questions US Motives in Iraq War
Moskovskiye Novosti
8 April 2003
Article by Vasiliy Aksenov, place and date not given: "It's All Very
Complicated"
Like it or not, what we're seeing in Iraq looks
a lot like an incursion by some "master race" into a land of the "humbled
and aggrieved." On the other hand, we are beginning to understand that
"weak" does not necessarily mean "good."
All over the world, and especially in Russia, the current outrageous
war in Iraq is being explained as of old by a single word: oil. The most
widespread slogan in the demonstrations in the West reads simply: No
Blood for Oil. In Russia, the majority don't want to hear about anything
else; the public has swung from socialist primitivism to capitalist
primitivism, which have turned out to be indistinguishable. The
explanations are simple in the extreme. Americans are greedy for oil.
While accounting for a single-digit percentage of the Earth's population,
the US population consumes a double-digit percentage of oil production
(45 percent, I think). They have huge businesses and tremendous amounts
of money, therefore they desperately need Iraq's oil, and therefore they
come up with all kinds of nonsense about the weapons of mass destruction
supposedly accumulated by the Dzhugashvili over there, who is from the
pragmatic standpoint a perfectly ordinary tough guy. The statement that
oil is far from the top factor in this war is viewed as the usual
American propaganda, that is, PR. In short, business as usual. Period.
Meanwhile, America in fact is not all that stuck on Babylonian
sources of black gold. It has others as well: Saudi, Emirate, Venezuelan,
Nigerian, Norwegian, not least of all Russian, and, finally, their own,
in Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska. As for the long-term, that is, strategic,
or historic, shall we say, prospects, oil as a source of energy may in
the near future turn out to be secondary anyway, like coal. Does this
mean that there are in fact some other real reasons for the war?
One of the reasons, the second, actually, after "weapons of mass
destruction," officially stated by President Bush is the passionate and
at the same time rather inadequately passionate desire to remove a
dictatorial regime and help the Iraqi people build a flourishing
democratic society. If the first half of this noble desire is quite
feasible, the second is an utter utopia. Three decades of a loathsome
dictatorship lead to the very serious destruction of human material. It's
doubtful that all the people flickering across our television screens
right now are going to begin flourishing cheerfully in the lap of
democracy immediately after their beloved caliph is driven out.
And anyway, why did this choice fall on Iraq specifically? Hard by
the US for more than 40 years now has been the no less vile Marxist
princeling Fidel, who, by the way, has just gone and quietly reimprisoned
all his dissidents. Not far from Iraq, without any censure whatsoever,
rules a hereditary Syrian ophthalmologist. On the Korean peninsula, yet
another hereditary "great leader" is doing chemistry experiments with
nuclear bombs to his heart's content. Hasn't the need for democratic
transformations arisen in these countries?
Most Americans are not all that concerned about the fate of democracy
in other countries. In principle, there's nothing they need overseas.
They view the distant world mostly as a tourist zone. Why have they sent
six of their aircraft carriers and 250,000 select troops specifically to
Iraq? The current war cannot be understood or vindicated (or condemned)
until its true reason is stated in full.
As I listened in recent days to the many TV commentators and pundits
on "war and peace," I was surprised to come across on the Russian World
channel an interview with Aleksandr Konovalov, president of Russia's
Center for Strategic Studies. This man, it seemed to me, has come closer
than anyone else to figuring out the "real reason." Rejecting "oil," he
expressed the thought that a network of fundamentally new threats has
arisen in the world right now, and it is in the light of these threats in
America, after the events of 11 September 2001, that such passionate
feelings were ignited for Saddam Husayn's Iraq.
The terrible blows inflicted by the Arab suicides against the great
power's two most cherished institutions not only left a far from healed
scar in its heart but also gave birth to a gigantic inferiority complex;
in other words, it shook America's all-encompassing superiority complex.
A horrific Hollywood catastrophe plot turned up in real life. Is it
possible, Americans are asking themselves, that a handful of foreign
madmen, in the middle of the day, literally "out of the blue," that is,
without any reason, and not only that but on a blindingly blue and gold
day, could shatter the myth of our invulnerability?
The invasion of Iraq is impossible outside the context of this event.
In essence, the present-day expedition is a continuation of the raid on
the al-Qa'ida bases and the Taliban regime. This is what Konovalov
thinks, and I almost agree with his concept.
There are many things you could call Americans, but "weaklings" and
decadents are not among them. Don't be misled into thinking that they
don't know how to give as good as they get. After living in this country
for 22 years, I dare remark that they love giving as good as they get.
One precisely formulated sentence has appeared several times in President
Bush's speeches: "We will never allow terrorists and terrorist regimes to
decide our children's future," he said. This means that America's
leadership is taking these new threats very seriously. They are talking
not only about today but about coming generations as well, that is, about
historical development.
Despite all the lessons of the last two centuries, we still have not
clarified the destructive power of mass terrorism sufficiently. We still
have not understood, for instance, that the Russian empire collapsed not
because of the development of Marxism but because of the 40 years of
continuous terror by underground groups and revolutionary parties against
the tsarist administration. Starting with the attempts by Karakozov and
continuing with the successful assassinations of Zhelyabov, Grinevitskiy,
and Perovskaya, not a month passed that a general, a governor, a police
chief, a grand duke, or a prime minister was not killed in some part of
the empire. At the moment of its fall, the administration was totally
demoralized by fear and despair, and the population had become accustomed
to these reprisals.
The present-day "shakhidization" of Islamic terrorism may give rise
to tremendous demoralization and a sense of doom among huge masses of
people, in the sense that "against a crow-bar there is no remedy." In
principle, we could be looking at a grandiose crisis of the modern world
comparable only to the destruction of the Roman empire and all of
classical civilization by the barbarians.
I don't know to what degree this historical presentiment holds sway
over the minds of the West's political establishment; however, the
strategic goal of the current Iraq campaign shows that there does exist,
if only on the subconscious level, a desire to avert global catastrophe.
Regardless of the absence of clear indications of the Iraqi regime's
involvement in the terrorist strategy, this regime is nonetheless the
strongest component of the anti-Western forces. Eliminating this regime
would decisively shake the destructive forces' (quite well-founded)
confidence in their ultimate victory.
In the Muslim world, the ideological call which proclaims that the
"new Crusaders" and Zionists have banded together now against Islam's
defender is enjoying great success. This isn't true. It's not Islam on
the whole that needs to worry and defend itself, but the West that should
be defending itself and worrying. The threat comes from an aggressive
Islam, that is, that part of Islam in which the idea of destroying the
infidel world has matured.
Where did it come from? From what depths did this incinerating hatred
arise? In this regard it's interesting to consider a concept that has
come up in our Eurasian circles. According to it, the West is in a state
of terminal disintegration, lack of will, a hopeless piling up of
economic, ideological, religious, and philosophical ideas; Heil, Oswald
Spengler! A new and dynamic Muslim civilization full of power is
developing stormily in the world; the future is with it. In principle,
this concept has a perfect right to existence, however, isn't it burying
the West and raising the East prematurely (as it has in the past)? Where
does the dynamic of the modern world come from, its industry, finance,
sociology, literature and art, philosophy and philanthropy, if not the
West? What has the East produced besides the idea of destruction fostered
in fundamentalist mosques?
History is being reshaped in line with the concept of
neo-Spenglerism. You can watch in amazement as the chapter in history
known as the Tatar-Mongol yoke is wiped away--and virtually out--in
various works. There was no such yoke, it turns out. The Mongol cavalry
brought nothing but good to Old Russia. It was the coming of the dynamic
East that saved the Russians from being swallowed up by the amoral (even
then), selfish, and cunning West. The Horde's cruelties have been
exaggerated by pro-Western historians. They did not level any towns. If
that's so, though, what ever happened to Kievan Russia? Are you saying it
never existed at all?
For all our desire to balance the various points of view, we can't
help but see that the core of modern Muslim dynamism, especially in its
Arabic form, is the negation of Western values and the suicidal terrorism
connected with it. We must treat this development with the utmost
seriousness. Events could take on an incredible, truly catastrophic
nature. Who would ever have thought 2000 years ago that a great
civilization of aqueducts, paved roads and cities, invincible legions,
and huge, albeit creaky, ships would perish under the blows of the shaggy
Huns and Goths and plunge into stagnation and vegetation for many
centuries? Approximately the same thing could happen in the near future
as well if this new weapon, murder by suicide--that crow-bar against
which there is no remedy--is not stopped. Our computers will fail and our
half-demolished cities will wither away. The merry carnivals and rock
concerts will be forgotten. Anthrax and gas injections will end in
demographic problems. It's better not to continue any further.
The present conflict has a very important philosophical foundation
that is in essence fundamental for the human race. The concept of life
and creation is going to face off against the concept of destruction and
death. It cannot simply be said that the former is good and the latter
bad, that the former unambiguously represents good and the latter evil.
Both "concepts," if one can use such a scholarly term here, are passing
out of ordinary usage into other dimensions. Schopenhauer thought it was
the "will to life" that drives the vicious circle of violence, that it is
inseparable from pain and suffering. In this regard, death is a kind of
liberation from the urge to ceaselessly feed and satisfy desire, on
which, actually, civilization is built. However, violent death itself is
a kind of demonic outburst of will. It seems to repudiate the other
postulate of the great Schopenhauer about man's sole truly divine
emotion--compassion.
Humanity must travel the path ordained for it. The sole meaning of
this path consists in achieving community, in overcoming pain through
compassion. Is resistance to violence following this route? Can we answer
this question?
The reader may think that I am trying to justify the current war.
That's not so. Any war, even the most justified, is a mass crime. It
seems to contradict human nature. Tolstoy arrived at this idea after
Sevastopol. On the other hand, a special breed of people, "knights of
war," is being born and reared in this same humanity. Nikolay Gumilev
poeticized war: "Holy, full of light, in truth,/The majestic cause of
war,/Seraphim, clear and winged,/At the soldiers' shoulders loom." He was
actually calling on people to approach the fallen enemy with a "fraternal
kiss."
Sometimes it seems to me, nonetheless, that as it develops, humanity
ought to reach an age when it totally rejects war. Isn't this what the
new concept of minimizing victims speaks to? Previous generations were
not especially careful; they thrashed right and left. Now people are
trying to teach bombs to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.
And at the same time even a modern technological military operation
cannot help but call up in the human memory many atavisms. Like it or
not, what we are seeing in Iraq looks like a crusade by some "master
race" into a land of the "humbled and aggrieved." On the other hand, we
are beginning to understand that "weak" does not necessarily mean "good."
In short, it's not all that simple. Quite the opposite, really: it's all
very complicated.
********
#8
BBC Monitoring
Russian General Staff "delaying" with military reform - newspaper
Source: Kommersant, Moscow, in Russian 11 Apr 03
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the armed forces' General
Staff Main Organization and Mobilization Directorate is working on
proposals to expand the conscription base. In the newspaper's opinion, the
idea suggests that "the General Staff has decided yet again to delay with
the military reform". The following is the text of the report, published on
11 April. The subheadings have been inserted editorially:
Yesterday, Maj-Gen Viktor Kozhushko, deputy chief of the General Staff Main
Organization and Mobilization Directorate, told journalists that in the
very near future the Defence Ministry will suggest to the State Duma and
the government that the base for drafting into the army be expanded. That
means that far fewer young men will be able to count on draft deferment and
that the General Staff has decided yet again to delay the military reform.
"The General Staff is in favour of retaining the draft system; the
contract-based system is not a panacea," the major-general told journalists
and immediately started seeking confirmation of the correctness of his
words in the practice of manning the armed forces of the NATO countries.
"According to our information, 25 years after moving to a contract-based
army the American Senate will soon examine a bill providing for the
restoration of the draft system. And in Germany it is generally considered
that both systems, a contract-based one and a draft, should operate."
Viktor Kozhushko's words reflect the viewpoint of his colleagues from the
General Staff who consistently oppose the reduction of the armed forces'
numerical strength to 1 million, the reduction of the term of service to
six months and the transition to a contract-based system of manning. These
are fundamental provisions of the reform of the armed forces which a
government working group is drafting on instructions from President
Vladimir Putin.
Reasons for draft deferment numerous
Those present almost forgot the reason why the journalists were assembled -
the preliminary results of the spring draft - although Maj-Gen Kozhushko
reminded them that this spring only 10 per cent of young men of draft age
could be drafted while 54 per cent of draftees are students and pupils who
have used their legal right to draft deferment. "You realize that even in
America there are just four grounds for deferring the draft for
reservists," the general said, turning again to his transatlantic
experience. "But in our country there are as many as 22 reasons."
Everything the general said after that came down to two ideological
premises to which the General Staff has obstinately adhered for the nearly
10 years that have elapsed since the state of the military reform
proclaimed by President Yeltsin. The first is the inexpediency of
transferring the formation of the armed forces to a contract basis because
of the shortage of money and the difficulty of working with contract
servicemen who "will not sleep in bunk beds and cannot manage without
expensive combat training". The second reason is patriotic. "The draft
unites the nation. It feels responsibility for the country's defence
capability and it rallies round," Victor Kozhushko asserted. "Although you
know it cannot be said that we at the General Staff are completely opposed
to the contract. At present there is a demographic slump and by 2010 it
will be possible to man the army only 50 per cent through the draft. So
that we are not opposed to it, we are indeed in favour, but only when the
time comes," the general added.
Draft expansion idea not universally welcome
The proposals of the working group for army reform, which includes
representatives of the General Staff, the Finance Ministry and the Ministry
of Economic Development and Trade, will be examined at a government session
on 24 April, Maj-Gen Kozhushko said. "This is a preliminary examination and
the final version will be ready by 1 June," Vitaliy Tsymbal, an expert from
the institute of the economy of the transitional period and a member of the
working group, said in an interview with Kommersant. "I have fears that the
generals will block our proposals. They are seeking to ensure that the
reduction of the draft be deemed inexpedient. You realize that the military
are interested in the draft system being preserved largely because that
system brings in an annual illicit revenue of R20bn for the staffers at the
military commissariats and medical commissions. But I do not think that if
the generals block our proposals the public will keep quiet."
The public's viewpoint was put by Valentina Melnikova, executive secretary
of the union of committees of soldiers' mothers of Russia: "For the entire
14 years that I have had dealings with General Staff representatives, these
people have been consistent," she says. "The General Staff is fighting for
all young men to pass through the barracks, as they did in Soviet times.
Incidentally, Gen Kozhushko is a member of the working group for the
development of the federal army reform programme created on instructions
from the president and all members of the working group have undertaken not
to comment on the group's activity. But it is clear that the General Staff
has now felt that they may not be supported at the very top and they have
taken countermeasures. Gen Kozhushko should say openly who is refusing to
fulfil the order of the supreme commander in chief."
********
#9
Russia Commission Head on Electoral System Reform, Party Funding, Media
Coverage
Rossiyskaya Gazeta
April 8, 2003
Interview with Russian Central Electoral Commission Chairman
Aleksandr Veshnyakov by Vladislav Vorobyev; place and date not given:
"Democracy Costs Money. Russian Central Electoral Commission Chairman
Aleksandr Veshnyakov Speaks on Reform of the Electoral System"
Reform of the Russian electoral system is drawing
to its logical close. It may be completed already at the beginning of
this summer and the parliamentary elections set for the end of this year
may be held based on an entirely renovated legislative foundation.
There is probably no other reform that was conducted in Russia so
quickly. But debates on changes and additions to a range of laws are
still continuing in the State Duma. Rossiyskaya Gazeta asked CEC
[Central Electoral Commission] Chairman Aleksandr Veshnyakov to explain a
position adopted by the CEC on some disputable issues.
[Vorobyev] According to the Law "On Political Parties," Rossiyskaya
Gazeta is obligated to publish free of charge 200 lines of keynote
documents for every party. And this is what we do. Thus far, we have
published already 107 programs of different parties, many of which do not
even have phone numbers. But they do have a program. Rossiyskaya
Gazeta has already spent 8.820 million rubles [R] on this. Nobody will
give this money back to us. Will 107 parties really run in the
elections? How much money will be spent on it?
[Veshnyakov] Democracy costs money and the state should to some extent
encourage society to develop and build an effective political system.
The 107 initiatives to build a party are first of all an expression of
democracy in the form and contents that are presently possible in Russia.
Many words of appreciation should go to your newspaper because you let
your readers better understand what Russian society is today. After
all, you are a publication of the Russian Government. If you cannot
obtain compensation for this kind of expenses, it is not correct. The
CEC is ready to help you on this issue.
As for a prospect of 107 parties running in the upcoming elections, I
believe that even 100 will not run in reality. After all, it is draft
programs of party organization committees that have been printed.
As far as I know, only 70 congresses have been conducted thus far.
About 50 organizing committees have already submitted documents to
register their parties and only 32 of them have registered their branches
in most of the Russian Federation components. In other words, only
these 32 parties are entitled at this point to take part in the upcoming
election campaign, which will kick off around 1 September.
[Vorobyev] After the Law "On Political Parties" came into force in the
summer of 2000, you predicted that the number of parties would go down.
Can we say today that your prediction has come true?
[Veshnyakov] Absolutely. Before the new law took effect, there were
more than 190 various political parties and associations operating in
Russia. All of them have a right to take part in elections. Today, as
I have already said, only 32 parties have so far crossed the first
barrier, registration, and are fully prepared for running in the election
campaign.
A second barrier will be elections to the State Duma. Parties that have
popular support will win seats in the Duma. You understand perfectly
well that the podium offered by the lower parliamentary chamber is very
important for any party. In addition, the presence in the Duma now
gives parties a right to field their own candidates without having to
collect signatures or to lodge a deposit in elections at all levels, from
the village council to Russian president.
It should not be forgotten that presidential elections will be conducted
three months after a new Duma is elected. Now, the parties that have
captured seats in the Duma will only have to hold a congress, determine
their candidate for Russian president in a secret ballot, and submit
documents to the Central Electoral Commission.
In addition, if your party was supported by more than 3 percent of
voters, it will receive every year a certain amount of money from the
federal budget. For example, if 25 million people voted for you, this
means that in January-March of 2004 your party will receive R25 million.
The same will happen every year until new elections. On the other
hand, a party that has failed to garner 2 percent of the vote will have
to return the money for free airtime on state television and radio
channels it received during the campaign.
[Vorobyev] Can we give up free airtime altogether to spare the parties
headache over possible financial consequences?
[Veshnyakov] The state, in my opinion, should give certain guarantees
providing every party with an opportunity to demonstrate themselves to
society. In the end, the fate of a particular politician or a whole
party will be decided by voters, not by bureaucrats sitting in cozy
offices. It is quite a logical and democratic approach. So, if you
showed your inadequacy in elections, you will not be able to shift the
blame on bureaucrats. And you should not take offense at people.
[Vorobyev] As far as we know, money has not been returned until now to
mass media after the latest elections to the State Duma in 1999...
[Veshnyakov] Well, some of it has been returned. Indeed, after 1999 a
list of debtors who failed to garner 2 percent was put together. There
were more than 20 such parties. At first, some of them started paying
the money back. Then, they realized they could not raise the whole sum
and stopped paying. Thus, they made a decision not to take part in
future elections any more. They died and we should not fuss about it --
it is also a democratic process of selection. Others decided to hide
under different names.
At present, according to a mechanism stipulated in the new law, any party
intending to run in the upcoming elections will have to sign an agreement
with mass media on free airtime and print space. This guarantees that
the money will be paid back. The CEC, for its, part, guarantees that if
the debtors fail to pay, they will most definitely not receive any
airtime in subsequent campaigns.
[Vorobyev] What if we handle it the other way around? Let the parties
pay first and the mass media will have to return the money to those who
garnered more than 2 percent...
[Veshnyakov] State Duma deputies will most probably approve this idea.
In addition, in my opinion, we should hold off on the introduction of
changes in present legislation. I understand that there is no limit to
perfection, especially in such an important matter as formation of
authorities through elections. But we should stop and use in practice
the mechanism created just recently, particularly that it is not so bad.
[Vorobyev] When will the electoral system reform be completed?
[Veshnyakov] New versions of the laws have already been adopted. The
first law is on main guarantees for electoral rights of Russian citizens
and their right to take part in a referendum, the second one -- on
elections of State Duma deputies, and the third one -- on elections of
the Russian president. All of them have already come into force. Also
adopted are two other laws important for the Russian electoral system: on
political parties and on the State Automated System "Elections." We
have yet to make a final brush, introducing changes and additions to
various laws in connection with the enactment of a revised version of the
Federal Law "On Main Guarantees for Electoral Rights of Russian Citizens
and Their Right To Take Part in a Referendum." We should clarify some
articles of the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Legal
Offenses, as well as the Law on Mass Media. After we do it, our program
to reform the electoral system will be completed.
[Vorobyev] Can we talk today about specific dates for the adoption of
proposed changes and additions?
[Veshnyakov] I hope that they will be adopted by the State Duma,
approved by the Federation Council, and take effect not later than the
beginning of next June, or about three months before the election
campaign starts.
[Vorobyev] Amendments to the Law on Mass Media incite mixed opinions
especially on the part of journalists...
[Veshnyakov] Aware of that, we deliberately asked the State Duma not to
put the debate on the amendments on a fast track. All points of view
should be heard and all arguments taken into consideration. In the end,
it is very important that we understand that, for example, the draft law
authors really made a mistake in a particular article or that in some
other article we, on the contrary, should maybe increase the
responsibility of sides. I do not rule out that some provisions may
have to be removed altogether. The draft law is being analyzed now.
[Vorobyev] One of the amendments says that the operation of an
individual mass medium may be suspended for the campaign period. What
about the freedom of speech?
[Veshnyakov] Those who say so are not right. On the contrary, through
the proposed amendments we want to protect journalists from bureaucratic
anarchy. The CEC has proposed introducing a protection mechanism for
mass media. Suppose a local bureaucrat in a Russian region does not
agree with the position adopted by a journalist. He will have to prove
his case in court, while the mass medium, for its part, will receive an
opportunity to protect its position in the same court.
As for a mechanism suspending the operation of mass media, I want to
point out that I sometimes have to deal with bad interpretations of
provisions stipulated in the draft law. As a result, we hear statements
that the CEC wants a right to close newspapers and television stations at
its own discretion. It is a lie. It is simply not true.
In reality, the draft law says the following: If a mass media violates
legally established campaign rules during an election campaign, the
electoral committee of a relevant federation component and the CEC will
have the right to file an administrative protocol with the court
demanding administrative prosecution of the mass medium. That is, a
fine of R3,000, for example.
Suppose the court decides that the campaign regulations were actually
violated. Then, the mass medium will be able to appeal this decision
with a higher court. If the ruling of the first instance is sustained,
a fine will be paid and the first violation is recorded. Not more than
that.
Following a second violation during the same campaign, the electoral
commission has a right to apply to the Press Ministry for suspending the
operation of this mass medium -- but only for the campaign period. For
its part, the Press Ministry is also supposed to go to court. In this
case, the judge indeed can rule to suspend this mass medium. However,
the ruling cannot take effect immediately. It is subject to appeal.
It is also true that instead of going to court, the Press Ministry can
just conduct a preventive conversation or disagree with the electoral
commission's conclusions at all.
It is only after a third violation during the same campaign that the
Press Ministry will be obligated to go to court. And the entire
mechanism for making a decision to suspend a publication or a television
or radio company will have to be executed in court.
[Vorobyev] In other words, with about two weeks to go before the
elections journalists will be able to write whatever they want because
there will simply be not enough time to close mass media?
[Veshnyakov] To some extent, you are right. I want to emphasize,
however, that the mechanism proposed by experts is not designed to close
mass media. We try to cope with the anarchy used sometimes by mass
media in their work. On the other hand, a fast-track decision-making
procedure is planed for some flagrant cases. One should bear
responsibility, heavy responsibility, for violating the law, because some
mass media are ready to pay 10 fines during the campaign. What is
R30,000 for a nationwide publication? One large publication will cover
entirely this cost. I do not even mention television, where one minute
of airtime costs up to $10,000. Therefore, the CEC simply must find an
adequate answer. If we are not right, please criticize us and prove
that the proposed draft law is dangerous. I am ready for a dispute.
[Vorobyev] Regulations for coverage of election campaigns are to be
changed as well...
[Veshnyakov] Some people attempt to reduce to absurd also this aspect
of the pre-electoral process. For example, some do not understand why
it is forbidden to talk about candidates' activities that are not
connected with their official duties. Very simple. Recall previous
campaigns. Stories were published every other day about some
candidates, saying how good people they are, that he himself is a
fisherman, and his wife is very good, etc. A positive image of a "role
model" was created by mass media.
[Vorobyev] So, you believe that voters are less influenced by stories
about official activities of candidates than about their private life?
[Veshnyakov] It is impossible to ban the coverage of candidates'
official activities. For example, there are deputy's functions that
some candidates must carry out during an election campaign as well.
This way, we can again come to a point of absurdity. We may wind up in
a situation where in several months before the elections the Duma passes
laws but mass media are not allowed to say what candidate adopted what
stance. The CEC is only trying to clear the election race from the dirt
and politically ordered lies that have been until recently dumped on our
heads.
[Vorobyev] Do you realize a relation between legal and illegal campaign
funds?
[Veshnyakov] I realize it more or less. It is a very big difference.
In some cases, slush funds handled 10 times the money that went through
the legal ones. We try to fight this vice, too. Now, parties are
financially transparent. They are required to submit every year a
financial report to the Ministry of Taxes and Levies.
During campaigns, the CEC can request those reports and pass them to mass
media. Moreover, journalists can familiarize themselves also with
findings of checks conducted by the Ministry of Taxes and Levies. Now,
it is possible to trace a party's income and find out, for example, how
much money it received from sponsors. Expenditures, too, have become
transparent. We can find out how much was spent to conduct a congress
and how much to maintain the apparatus.
In September, you will receive reports submitted by all the political
parties existing in 2002. Publish them. Thus, a mechanism of public
control over activities of parties will be created.
[Vorobyev] At your recent meeting with television journalists, you
proposed that they send their 100 questions and the CEC publish its 100
answers.
[Veshnyakov] The journalists have still not sent their 100 questions,
which is why there are not 100 answers yet. But we are really ready for
such cooperation.
*********
#10
Los Angeles Times
April 13, 2003
Harry Potter Battles Attack of the Clones
'Tanya Grotter' is his counterpart in Russia, where plagiarism charges are
shrugged off by nearly everyone in the literary world.
By Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer
Moscow
With his boyish blond hair, clear blue eyes and sweet smile, Russian author
Dmitri Yemets is disarmingly likable for someone accused of plagiarism.
Mega-author J.K. Rowling sued him in an Amsterdam court, alleging that
Yemets was a copycat with his book "Tanya Grotter i Volshebny Kontrabas" --
or "Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass."
Yemets' Dutch publisher, Byblos, lost the case this month and was ordered
not to publish the book in the Netherlands, but plans to appeal.
The court decision fires a warning to publishing houses elsewhere in
Europe, Asia and the United States to steer clear of "Tanya Grotter," but
it but does nothing to control the spread of "Tanya Grotter" in Russia.
"Tanya Grotter" emerged last year and quickly took off. After issuing legal
threats in Russia, Rowling and Time Warner Inc., which has made two of her
books into films, took action not in Moscow but in Amsterdam.
The case illustrates the difficulties of enforcing intellectual property
law in Russia, where video, DVD and software pirates churn out their wares
with cheeky disregard for copyright law and where police crackdowns are
sporadic.
The idea of Harry Potter as a brand name to be defended against pretenders
in court is lost on the Russian literary world -- in a country where
authorities are lackadaisical about enforcing copyright and intellectual
property laws. In fact, many Russian critics defend Yemets as a talented
writer who did no harm with "Tanya Grotter," arguing that the Grotter
series is a valid literary endeavor.
Yemets insists "Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass" is a lighthearted
parody of the Harry Potter books that gained a life of its own in the three
successive books he rushed out in less than a year.
"I believe in my books," says Yemets, 29, who has been deflecting
approaches from low-budget Russian filmmakers. "Manuscripts don't burn. I
sincerely believe that 'Tanya Grotter' is a good book and it won't
disappear because good books don't sink without a trace."
The Amsterdam court rejected the argument that the book was a parody and
ruled that its publication would violate copyright and trademark laws.
There are plot similarities between "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"
and "Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass." Both heroes are 10-year-old
orphans who attend wizardry schools and battle evil wizards. Potter rides a
broomstick and Grotter rides a double bass.
Yemets says his initial idea was to create Tanya Grotter as Harry Potter's
antithesis. But he argues that his books have diverged in style from the
increasingly dark and gothic Harry Potter books. Yemets says his books are
comic fantasy and romance, and Tanya Grotter is a rebellious figure who
dabbles in black magic.
Yemets' books don't match Harry Potter's Russian sales of 1.5 million in
the last nine months, but he's a significant competitor, selling 600,000
copies in that period. He is also a fast writer. Yemets has published 20
books and it takes him three months to write a 300-page Grotter novel.
"What Yemets did is totally normal and acceptable in literature," said a
Russian literary critic, Lev Anninsky.
" 'Tanya Grotter' is definitely much better than many other books written
recently. 'Tanya Grotter' is good reading for children. It is ingenuous,
kindhearted and entertaining reading that does not spoil children.
"If 'Grotter' is so much weaker, why file a lawsuit against it? Why not
wait until it dies a natural death? If they are fighting against 'Grotter'
so vigorously, then it means the book is not that bad."
Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, a popular Russian book critic, said it was clear that
Yemets used many of the ideas from the Harry Potter books.
"But it is not a crime at all. That kind of thing constitutes normal
literary practice today," he said.
Another critic, Alla Latynina, of Literaturnaya Gazette, said both the
Harry Potter and the Tanya Grotter books were good reading for children.
"No one can ban a writer from writing a parody of any work of literature in
the world. It just cannot be done," she argued.
Svetlana Polyakova of EKSMO publishers, which publishes the Tanya Grotter
books in Russia, mounted a novel argument, implying that legal niceties may
be sacrificed if it encourages children to read good books.
"Children don't care about copyright laws," Polyakova said. "All they need
is good literature. And 'Tanya Grotter' is good literature."
Tatyana Uspenskaya, marketing director of Rosman, which publishes the
Potter series in Russia, counters that intellectual property has to be the
primary standard.
"As a result of this theft, consumers have ended up with yet another book
that they liked. And it's cheaper than the original. In that sense
consumers are better off, no doubt. But that does not make theft any less
appalling or illegal."
Yemets has written 20 other fantasy books, but the Grotter books account
for half his earnings. He's coy about how much he makes.
He would like people not to judge the book by its title, but by its contents.
"I've never dodged an analysis of my books. My strongest shield is the
text. I always say, 'Read it first and then judge,' " he said.
"Three-quarters of those who read my books become my allies."
*********
#11
Washington Post
April 13, 2003
The Hermitage, Out to Recapture Lost Age, Works
By Linda Hales
Washington Post Staff Writer
In the movie "Russian Ark," centuries of history are reenacted by a cast of
thousands in sumptuous period costumes. Time flows, but the characters,
including the Greats, Peter and Catherine, are trapped in the galleries of
the State Hermitage Museum. In this eerie fantasy, Mikhail B. Piotrovsky,
the museum's director and Russia's cultural ambassador, plays himself.
Piotrovsky's scene is one of the few set in the tumultuous 20th century. He
wears modern street clothes, including a black muffler he donned in protest
in the 1990s, when the government withheld funding and heat had to be
rationed to keep the galleries, with their 3 million artworks and 2,000
employees, from freezing. In the film, Piotrovsky encounters the ghost of
his father, Boris, who directed the Hermitage for 26 years. He asks for
guidance, but the older man cannot speak.
"The Hermitage is a mirror of Russia," Piotrovsky explained on a recent
visit to Washington. "All the problems of Russia you can see in the
Hermitage. All the developments, you can see in the Hermitage."
Actually, one of the problems is best seen at the National Gallery of Art.
That's where I joined the director for a private tour. Piotrovsky had come
to Washington to open an exhibition of Hermitage paintings at the National
Museum for Women in the Arts. While here, he talked up plans for expansion
with members of the Smithsonian Associates. As head of Russia's largest
television channel, ORT, and Vladimir Putin's deputy on the Presidential
Council on Culture, Piotrovsky is also Russia's official voice on matters
of culture. In the quiet of a gray afternoon in Washington, he expressed
the belief that museums could prevent "a clash of civilizations" by
fostering a multicultural outlook.
"I think this is the real solution for us," he said. "This is the challenge
where world intelligence can do something."
I had invited Piotrovsky to America's "ark" to plug a historical gap -- one
that has had a spectacular impact on the cultural wealth of this nation.
The National Gallery has not joined in the cultural celebration of St.
Petersburg in its tricentennial year, but it well could. Andrew Mellon
founded the institution with 21 of the finest paintings the czars'
Hermitage ever possessed. Piotrovsky is doing his best to take them back,
one by one, on friendly temporary loan.
Mellon acquired the treasures in 1930 and 1931, during a particularly weak
moment in Soviet cultural history. The government of Joseph Stalin needed
hard currency more than it wanted Old Masters. A five-year fire sale of art
ensued. In all, 2,880 paintings were sent to auction abroad.
Mellon acquired Rembrandts, van Dycks and Raphaels, a van Eyck, a Titian, a
Rubens, a Botticelli, a Perugino, a Veronese, a Velazquez, two by Hals and
a Chardin, for about $6.65 million. (The value of such a collection in
today's dollars is almost beyond calculation. London's National Gallery is
trying to raise $45 million to keep a single Raphael, "Madonna of the
Pinks," from sale abroad.) More than 60 years after Mellon, scholars have
reattributed a few, leaving only one pure Rembrandt. When not on tour, the
paintings hang in second-floor galleries of the West Building. The
identifying notations "Andrew W. Mellon Collection" and "1937" give them away.
On this afternoon, Piotrovsky took them in at a leisurely pace. He paused
before Botticelli's "Adoration of the Magi," but kept a distance. He
acknowledged Perugino's "Crucifixion" and Raphael's dazzling "St. George
and the Dragon," then closed in on Raphael's luminous "Alba Madonna," a
bucolic Virgin in a heavily carved and gilded frame. We had yet to
encounter a dozen works, including Rembrandt's dynamic "Polish Nobleman,"
when I asked him how he felt.
"It's terrible," he exhaled. "Deaccession is wrong. A museum is a monument
in itself, an organism of history."
This is the lesson he is trying to convey in Russia. And the National
Gallery is helping.
Plundered Treasures
"All times in Russia are complicated," Piotrovsky said. "We're always in
crisis."
The early years of the Soviet regime were a curator's nightmare. Officials
plundered the collection to provide gifts for foreign officials, as well as
selling them at auction. Three buyers are named on the Hermitage Web site
(www.hermitagemuseum.org): Armand Hammer, the American industrialist;
Calouste Gulbenkian, an oilman whose collection is in Lisbon; and Mellon,
then secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
Mellon quickly became the target of a tax investigation. In "Russian Art
and American Money," historian Robert Williams tells how Mellon set up a
charitable trust to which he gave the paintings, deducting their cost from
income while keeping the paintings at home. Investigators eventually closed
the file after Mellon promised to build a public museum in Washington to
house his art. Mellon died in 1937; the building was completed in 1941.
Until the inquiry into Mellon's dealings, the Russian public had no sense
of the scale of Hermitage losses.
"We still don't know many details," Piotrovsky said. "Some of the greatest
masterpieces stayed."
The museum is about to publish the first documents on the deaccessions,
which could make riveting reading.
"Our experience shows it's a very difficult road," he warned. "You begin to
sell things that are not important. . . . We can see from the documents how
the greatest masters went."
He dismissed official justifications, then or now. "They always talk about
feeding the starving children," he said. "They buy arms. They don't feed
the children."
If Walls Could Talk
Dozens of world leaders have been invited to St. Petersburg to join
President Putin in celebrating the city's 300th birthday in May. During the
festivities, Piotrovsky will keep the Hermitage open 24 hours a day.
The museum began as the private collection of Catherine the Great, who made
a major purchase in 1764: 225 Flemish and Dutch masters intended for
Prussia's Frederick the Great, who was too impoverished by war to pay for
them. They were hung in the Winter Palace on Palace Square, centerpiece of
the museum's cluster of baroque and neoclassical buildings. There are more
than 12,000 square feet of stone and marble floors, including the cascade
of white marble steps on which the cast of "Russian Ark" descends to an
unknown fate in the film's final scene.
Almost every czar added to the collection, and Piotrovsky told stories as
he walked. After the Bolsheviks took over the Winter Palace, everyone in
St. Petersburg knew the czar's wine cellars were still full. Keepers
destroyed the cache before the populace could ransack the museum to get at
the bottles. The Neva River "ran red for a day," Piotrovsky said.
The 15th-century "Annunciation" by Jan van Eyck reminded him of the story
of William II, a 19th-century king of the Netherlands who married Czar
Nicholas I's sister. William borrowed from his brother-in-law and died in
1849, with debts unpaid. Instead of trading the painting for the debt, the
Dutch parliament held an auction. Piotrovsky reported with a chuckle that
the sale was lackluster, and Nicholas got the masterpiece for a song. It
was still the only van Eyck in the collection when Mellon bought it for
$502,899.
Curators did their best to save the van Eyck from Stalin's Antiquariat, the
state agency in charge of sales. Piotrovsky recounted how the staff tried
to obfuscate and delay. When the order came to hand it over, they wired
back coolly that they didn't have a "van Dyck" by that name and rebuked the
Muscovites for engaging in bureaucratic sabotage. The ploy didn't work.
Mellon paid $1.7 million for Raphael's "Alba Madonna," an
early-16th-century bucolic scene of the Virgin Mary and Christ child. The
painting had passed from one Spanish noble to another before Nicholas I
acquired it in 1836. Since Mellon, the Hermitage has made do with an
18th-century copy.
Passing a portrait of Pope Innocent X from 1650, Piotrovsky took note of a
scholarly reattribution from Diego Velazquez to the painter's entourage.
In a sweep of scholarly realism, he redefined the whole category of
religious art.
"When religious art comes to museums, it stops being religious art," he
said. "It's art. When an icon is in a church, it's not art, it's ritual."
A Partnership
Piotrovsky became the museum's first post-Soviet director in 1992. Shortly
afterward, he journeyed to Washington and met with National Gallery
Director Earl A. "Rusty" Powell. Their first conversation was simple, as
Piotrovsky remembers. He pitched the idea of borrowing a Mellon painting
for special display "to remind people in Russia that this kind of thing can
never happen" again.
"I was a young director, I could do anything," Piotrovsky said.
Powell points out that the two men are almost the same age (Piotrovsky is
58, Powell 59) and took over in the same year. He agreed to Piotrovsky's
appeal as a gesture of "friendship and collegiality." For Powell, relations
with the Hermitage are no different from those with London or Paris
museums. But he acknowledges that the view from the Hermitage is far more
complex.
"It's important for them because of the history of the pictures," he said.
"That's unique to them."
The "Annunciation" went first, a one-painting show that lasted 10 weeks in
1997.
Titian's "Venus" followed last year. The Venetian Renaissance masterpiece
shows a voluptuous goddess admiring her face in a mirror, while the figure
of Cupid tries to place a crown on her golden braids. Titian kept the
painting until his death. Nicholas I acquired it in 1850 from the estate of
the family in whose palace the painter died.
Piotrovsky says that negotiations over the Venus slowed as relations
between governments cooled. But last May, in time for the 150th anniversary
of the opening of the New Hermitage building, President Bush toured with
Putin, and the National Gallery's Titian was on view.
"It is a great sign of trust between countries," Piotrovsky said, "which
may be more important than missiles."
He has requested the "Alba Madonna," but worried weeks ago that war would
intervene. Days before the bombs began falling on Baghdad, Powell
acknowledged a "plan but no timetable." A Gallery spokeswoman called back
to say that the painting was likely to go to St. Petersburg in 2004 or
2005, after a stop in London.
Relations between the museums have evolved from Cold War diplomacy to
personal friendships. Only a few years ago, the National Gallery objected
to a Washington Post request to photograph Piotrovsky in its halls. This
time it welcomed a photographer and volunteered an expert guide, to speed
the tour along. On the appointed day, not one but two representatives
materialized. They positioned themselves at Piotrovsky's elbows.
Going Global
Piotrovsky learned to walk in the halls of the Hermitage, where his father
had begun working as a schoolboy. Mikhail Piotrovsky was born on Dec. 9,
1944, in Yerevan, Armenia, and moved to St. Petersburg soon afterward.
He tells how his father put out flames after rockets struck the museum
during World War II. Paintings had been removed, and artists who lived in
the cellars sketched the galleries with empty frames still on the walls.
Today, the younger Piotrovsky describes the era as a heroic struggle
between the forces of culture and the forces of anti-culture.
It is a theme he returns to when contemplating current events.
"We live in a time of globalization," he said. "We have to change from
McDonald's to shared cultures -- to multicultural globalism."
A scholar of Arab culture, he sees inherent danger in the growing animosity
between Islam and the West.
"If it became a conflict of religions, it cannot stop," he said.
Piotrovsky has been going global on his own. In 2001, he put Old Masters on
permanent display in Las Vegas, in partnership with New York's Guggenheim
Museum, and opened a London annex known as Hermitage Rooms at Somerset
House. In St. Petersburg, he has added an Internet cafe, an e-commerce
boutique (www.shop.hermitagemuseum.org) and a computer gallery, where young
Russians flock to click and play with art.
"This is today's Hermitage," Piotrovsky said. "Sometimes, they even go to
find the object in the museum. As long as they are playing with Hermitage
art, it's okay."
Tomorrow's museum could become a complex of entertainment and shopping as
well as art appreciation centered on Palace Square. Talk of money has
vacillated from $400 million a few years ago to a scaled-down ambition of
$150 million on this day. Piotrovsky talks of a "greater Hermitage" with
the excitement of the Guggenheim Bilbao but not the contemporary
architecture. He mentions Rem Koolhaas, the avant-garde Dutch architect
(who designed the Las Vegas interior), but insists he has nothing overtly
controversial in mind.
"We're a 19th-century museum," Piotrovsky said. Two decades from now, "I
hope you will see the same thing as you see now."
********
Web page for CDI Russia Weekly:
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Archive for Johnson's Russia List:
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson
With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and
the MacArthur Foundation
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