CDI Russia Weekly-#165 3 August 2001 Edited by David Johnson Center for Defense Information 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington DC 20036 phone: 202-332-0600; fax:202- 462-4559 djohnson@cdi.org Web Version: http://cdi.org/russia/165.html CDI Russia Weekly Home: http://www.cdi.org/russia/ CDI Home: http://www.cdi.org The CDI Russia Weekly is an e-mail newsletter that carries news and analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, economic, social, military, and foreign policy issues. With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation, CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education organization. Contents: 1. Christian Science Monitor: Fred Weir, Kursk recovery may salvage Russian shipyard, too. Despite fresh setbacks this week, Sevmash workers hope publicity will bring needed foreign contracts. 2. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Dmitry Gornostayev, START-1: THE ONLY STRATEGIC ARMS REDUCTION TREATY THAT WORKS. Ten years ago Moscow and Washington signed the START-I Treaty. 3. Izvestia: Georgy Ilyichev, EUROPEAN UNION HOPES TO ACCEPT RUSSIA SOMEDAY. How can Russia become part of Europe? 4. Los Angeles Times: Robert Hunter, Nothing's Free in Dealing With Putin. 5. RFE/RL: Kathleen Knox, Russia: Authorities Break Up March On Chechen Refugees' Plight. 6. Jane's Defence Weekly: Luke Hill, NATO, Russia Compare Force Levels. 7. AFP: Putin hosts "no-ties" CIS summit in seaside resort. 8. Interfax: INTL. COMPANIES SAY THEY DO NOT FEAR RUSSIAN ANTI- GLOBALISTS. 9. THE JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION Prism: Sergei Oznobishchev, WILL THE "NEW PARTNERSHIP" SUCCEED? (re US and Russia) 10. The Russia Journal: 'Spying damages relations more than before.' Ex-CIA chief speaks out on NATO and U.S.-Russia cooperation. 11. US Department of State: Commerce's Evans at American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. ******** #1 Christian Science Monitor 3 August 2001 Kursk recovery may salvage Russian shipyard, too Despite fresh setbacks this week, Sevmash workers hope publicity will bring needed foreign contracts. By Fred Weir Special to The Christian Science Monitor The world's largest building, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is workshop no. 55 here at Sevmash, an off-limits shipyard in Russia's far north that built some of the biggest submarines, including the ill- fated Kursk. Everything about this sprawling city-within-a-city, with 25,000 workers and dozens of huge workshops and floating docks, seems vastly outsized. It is a classic example of the former Soviet Union's fixation with gigantism, demonstrating national power by making the biggest examples of everything. In its time, the USSR constructed the most enormous hydro-electric dam, the roomiest hotel, the tallest TV tower, the largest transport plane, the heaviest battle tank, and the mightiest particle accelerator. A popular joke from the 1980s went that the Soviet computer industry produced "the world's biggest microchip." But managers here at Sevmash aren't laughing. They say their experience at constructing on a vast scale is key to the forthcoming operation to salvage the Kursk, which sank during Arctic war games a year ago with the loss of all 118 crew members. They hope publicity surrounding the effort will help save the shipyard from bankruptcy by showing the world that Sevmash can do much more than just build warships and atomic subs. Inside the cavernous, hangarlike shop 55 - on the same slipway where the Kursk was launched six years ago - a giant steel pontoon is being built in what engineers here say is record time. Along with a sister pontoon taking shape in a nearby building, it will be strapped to a lifting barge in September and deployed to raise the Kursk from its resting place on the sea bed a few hundred miles to the north. "No other shipyard could have built these pontoons to this huge scale on such a tight schedule," says Sevmash director David Pashayev. "This should play a major role in changing Sevmash's reputation." More than half the 250 nuclear-powered submarines launched by the USSR during three cold war decades came from Sevmash. But the facility fell on cruel times after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Military orders plunged to near zero, though at least one late-generation atomic sub is still under construction here. The company's main work over the past decade has been dismantling the atomic warships it built in the past and chopping them up according to specifications laid down by Russian-US arms control agreements. Managers here concede the US had to supply the precision cutting equipment for that job since, they joke, Sevmash isn't much good at making things smaller. "We have great capabilities, but not enough work," says deputy director Oleg Korotkov. "We need more opportunities to show what we can do." Sevmash and a smaller shipyard are the only industrial plants supporting Severodvinsk, a city of 250,000 that was built in the 1930s on the shore of the remote White Sea to service the Soviet Navy's northern fleet. The entire area is still an officially closed military zone, and foreigners require special permission to visit. That secret status has hampered the shipyard's attempts to broaden its production and reach out to world markets. "Things are getting a little bit better in Severodvinsk now, but it's still hard going," says Anatoly Yefremov, governor of the surrounding Archangel region. "Back in 1998, workers at Sevmash were owed 18 months back pay, and they were living on the potatoes they grew in their kitchen gardens." Since Vladimir Putin became president last year, wage arrears have been paid and military orders have increased. Sevmash also has landed a few commercial contracts that include construction of giant floating fish farms for a Norwegian company, huge high-speed aluminum ferries for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and a couple of oil tankers. But managers say they could do much more. For instance, they are masters at building colossal floating docks, which could be used in any part of the world. Another area Sevmash is itching to get into is production of oil-drilling platforms. "There is an Arctic oil boom coming, and companies will need really big, strong rigs to withstand the weather and ice pressure," says Vyacheslav Popov, the company's deputy head of international contacts. "Sevmash is right here, on the edge of the Arctic, with the right experience and equipment to provide everything that will be needed." Of course, Sevmash's high hopes may ride to some extent on the success of the Kursk operation, which is reportedly falling far behind schedule. In the latest delay, the vice admiral in charge of the recovery said this week that plans to use remote-controlled robots to cut holes for lifting cables in the sub's thick steel hull were being scrapped. Instead, divers would have to perform the difficult and risky operation by hand. "Building the means to recover the Kursk is a sorrowful responsibility for us," says Sergei Kolovangin, manager of workshop 55. "That submarine was a child of our shipyard, and it does not feel strange that its destiny has become entangled with ours." ******* #2 Nezavisimaya Gazeta August 2, 2001 [translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only] START-1: THE ONLY STRATEGIC ARMS REDUCTION TREATY THAT WORKS Ten years ago Moscow and Washington signed the START-I Treaty By Dmitry GORNOSTAYEV These days Moscow and Washington are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the signing of the first and the only operating treaty, under which the two nuclear powers began for the first time in history to cut their atomic arms arsenals. At the 1991 summit in Moscow USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush signed the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, which is known today as the START-I Treaty. At that time it was simply called the START Treaty. Later, with the commencement of the negotiations on the subsequent document in the sphere of the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive systems, both treaties began to be called the START-I and the START-II Treaties. Today, ten years later, the significance of this Treaty is again becoming extremely topical in the general international context and within the framework of bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington. However, whereas only positive aspects were emphasised in 1991, the tone of the talks about strategic nuclear issues in 2001 has become increasingly negative. The reason for that is the US desire to get rid of the 1972 ABM Treaty, on the basis of which the Kremlin and the US White House have been able in subsequent years at first just to limit and then reduce their nuclear arsenals. Incidentally, the START-I Treaty, as its preamble explicitly says, is also based on the commitments of Moscow and Washington arising from the 1972 ABM Treaty. In actual fact, the START-I Treaty is the only document today that really works in the sphere of the strategic offensive arms reduction. The START-II Treaty signed by George Bush Sr. again and Boris Yeltsin on January 3, 1993 has not yet entered into force since the US Senate has not ratified it to this day. The START-I treaty, the protocols, coordinated statements, annexes and the memorandum to it, which are its integral part, include three volumes and a total of about 600 pages. They stipulate in detail various restrictions, which the parties undertake, and also the mechanism of cuts, inspections, statements, notifications, etc. Pursuant to the basic provisions (stipulated, in particular, in article II), Russia and the USA must have by December 2009 and thereafter no more than 1,600 pieces of delivery vehicles, i.e. inter-continental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers and 6,000 units of charges carried by the deployed inter-continental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. Apart from that, there are restrictions for the production, testing and deployment of new types of ballistic missiles. In particular, the Treaty fully prohibits heavy inter-continental ballistic missiles, "the vehicles, including missiles, for injecting nuclear arms or any other type of mass destruction weapons into the near-Earth orbit or partly the near-Earth orbit," air-to-surface ballistic missiles, long-range airborne nuclear cruise missiles carrying two and more nuclear charges. Incidentally, these restrictions can become an obstacle on the way of new research projects by the US Defence Department. In particular, the last week's sensation, the space bomber, the programme of the creation of which the Pentagon, according to its press-secretary Craig Quigley, intends to develop, will fall under the START-I restrictions, if, naturally, we presume that this horror craft becomes a reality. So, the START-I Treaty largely foresaw, ten years before the US returned to the space bomber project, the possibility of the creation of such weapons and thus placed a complete ban on its creation and testing. Bush Jr. says that the ABM Treaty has become outdated; however, he has not made any similar statements in relation to the arms reduction treaties. The strategic offensive arms reduction has been proclaimed a strategic goal of the Republican President. No less important is the fact that given the US unilateral withdrawal form the ABM Treaty, the START-I Treaty will cease to exist. This was repeatedly stressed at the highest level. In general, the Treaty signed ten years ago between the USSR and the USA became an important component of the entire package of accords in the sphere of strategic stability, which had worked without any failure all these years and enabled Moscow and Washington to proceed with further nuclear arms cuts. However, with the accession of the new administration to power, the entire system has been put in question. ******* #3 Izvestia August 1, 2001 EUROPEAN UNION HOPES TO ACCEPT RUSSIA SOMEDAY How can Russia become part of Europe? Author: Georgy Ilyichev [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] A RECENT INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR DISCUSSED THE STATE OF EU- RUSSIA RELATIONS AND SUGGESTED WAYS IN WHICH THE TWO SIDES CAN ENHANCE THEIR ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL TIES. IF EUROPE IS TO BE ON EQUAL TERMS WITH THE US AND CHINA, IT NEEDS RUSSIA'S RESOURCES; BUT RUSSIA ITSELF HAS A LONG WAY TO GO. The Moscow School for Political Research and the Center for European Reform (London) have conducted a seminar on how the European Union (EU) can help Russia. Prominent Russian and foreign political analysts who attended the seminar expressed a number of valuable ideas. The occasion for the discussion was a new publication by prominent British diplomat David Gowan on the state of EU-Russia relations. Gowan feels quite free to assess Russia's relations with the EU. But at the same time, he stresses that only his personal point of view is being represented, not to be taken as the official stance of the British government. For instance, Gowan believes that Russia's policy on the EU is only rhetoric, without any substance. Many prominent Russian political analysts and sociologists attended the seminar: Yelena Nemirovskaya, Vladimir Mau, Dmitry Trenin, Yury Levada, and others. Yelena Nemirovskaya, head of the Moscow School for Political Research, said: "The Western world has not lost interest in dealing with Russia." Dmitry Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Center in Russia, said: "Russia won't be able to become part of Europe until it stops seeing itself as a great power." In his opinion, "there are too many priorities in Russia's foreign policy." On the one hand, we declare that we want to restore the greatness of Russia, in the best sense of the term, i.e. we want Russia to be one of the centers of a multi- polar world. On the other hand, we try to blackmail our Western partners - threatening to turn our Asian back on them if they do not accept our terms. Simultaneously, Russia announces that it wants to become a European nation. According to Trenin, it is impossible to make Russia a European nation solely through negotiations with Brussels. He says that for this purpose, Russia should first solve its domestic problems, like Chechnya. The current situation in the North Caucasus shows Russia as a European nation which has remained somewhere in the Middle Ages. Participants in the seminar also noted that the EU cannot do without Russia either - since the EU can only be equal to such global centers of power as the US and China if it includes Russia, with its vast territory and enormous economic potential. Meanwhile, the first precept of the market is that there is no mercy for rivals. Won't Europe invade Russia's domestic market and oust Russian producers? Russia is a unique country, and it cannot develop in accordance with any of the existing models, whether European, Chinese, or Islamic. (Translated by Kirill Frolov) ******* #4 Los Angeles Times August 1, 2001 [for personal use only] Nothing's Free in Dealing With Putin By ROBERT E. HUNTER, Robert E. Hunter, a senior advisor at the Rand Corp., was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993 to 1998 At the Genoa G-8 summit, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin gave President Bush a priceless going-away present: implicit acceptance that Moscow will not let the Antiballistic Missile Treaty stand in the way of building a missile defense shield around the United States. But little in this world is free, especially in dealing with the Russians. Putin expects to be paid. And, within limits, Bush should do so. Unlike his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, Putin seems to know what he wants for Russia and, as an old KGB operative, has a good sense of tactics in dealing with the West. Blocking all U.S. work on national missile defense is not high on his wish list. Why should it be? Following the May visit to Moscow of a high-level Washington team to describe the U.S. program, Putin obviously concluded that, as of yet, "there is no there there"--that the U.S. is technically incapable of deploying a robust defense system that could seriously affect the Russian offensive nuclear arsenal for a decade or more. So Putin surely asked himself, should I continue playing the role of "bad cop," thus letting old Cold Warriors in the U.S. use Russian obduracy to quiet the opposition to missile defenses? Indeed, by embracing joint U.S.-Russia discussion of both offensive and defense nuclear arms, he cedes leadership in questioning the U.S. antimissile program to the allies, the Chinese and members of Congress. And now the price. That derives from what Putin really wants to achieve as Russian president, about which he has made no secret. He wants to keep the Russian Federation together and to convince the West, especially the U.S., to do no more about Moscow's war in Chechnya--an "object lesson" to other minorities in Russia thinking about independence--than to hector him from time to time. He wants to re-centralize as much authority as possible in Moscow and in himself as a latter-day czar, and he is making significant progress. He wants to set the Russian economy firmly on an upward path--the prerequisite for his other goals and his own political survival. And, for good measure, he would like Russia to be seen as a significant player on the world scene, when today it is, at best, a medium-sized power. Putin gains such added stature simply by the United States paying court to him over the ABM Treaty. But why does it do so? After all, the administration has a point: With today's relatively benign U.S.-Russia relationship, nobody would think of negotiating such a treaty afresh. Further, there is almost nothing Russia could do if the U.S. simply walked away from the ABM Treaty. Yet doing so would cause a rumpus with most of the civilized world. Thus the Bush administration has chosen to negotiate with Putin, and he is playing it for all it's worth. He will, no doubt, also try to gain slackening of U.S. interest in inviting the three Baltic states to join NATO at the November 2002 Prague summit. What the Russian leader really wants from the U.S. and the West is support for Russia's still-flagging economy. It has had a bump with today's high world oil prices, but oligarchs, including those in charge of natural resources, continue to wield inordinate power. Economic problems are not Russia's only ones: Disease, notably once-defunct killers like tuberculosis, is on the rise; and Russia is the only non- African country that is depopulating, at a rapid clip. It was no accident that Putin first showed Bush some flexibility on the ABM Treaty at their June meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and in exchange the U.S. president endorsed Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization; or that the only tangible bilateral agreement at Genoa was to start a Russian-U.S. business dialogue. Given that U.S. missile defenses are a long way off--and probably even then no real strategic challenge to Russia--it was not rocket science for Putin to trade flexibility on the ABM Treaty for economic benefits. Even so, he can be expected to bargain hard on the details, to remind the European allies about his concerns over NATO's expansion and role in the Balkans and to get as much as he can of the benefits of trade, investment and inclusion in the global economy. Likewise, given that the U.S. does want the Russian economy to succeed, paying just this part of Putin's price is not a bad deal for Bush. What would remain is for the U.S. to decide whether it really wants national missile defenses and at what cost in money and relations with countries besides Russia. ******* #5 Russia: Authorities Break Up March On Chechen Refugees' Plight By Kathleen Knox Authorities yesterday broke up a march designed to highlight the plight of Chechen refugees -- just minutes after participants started out on their planned route from Ingushetia to Moscow. It was meant to be a reminder of the predicament of the some 150,000 people who are still in Ingushetia months after fleeing across the border to escape the fighting, and comes as the Russian authorities are trying to persuade many to return. Prague, 2 August 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The "March for Peace" was meant to take 70 days from the Ingush village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, near the Dagestan border, to Moscow. Instead, it lasted just a few minutes, as authorities moved in to disband and -- some reports say -- arrest the marchers, claiming they lacked the papers required for permission. The march was designed to highlight the plight of a group of refugees on a hunger strike since June to protest conditions at the camps in Ingushetia. Tens of thousands of civilians fled across the border to escape the fighting in Chechnya and are now living in makeshift, often highly unsanitary, accommodations. It also comes in a week of significant dates in the Chechen conflict. It was two years ago today that Chechen rebels moved into neighboring Daghestan, beginning a chain of events that led to Russian troops storming back into Chechnya. And Russian authorities are stepping up security in the region as they brace themselves for possible separatist attacks marking another anniversary on 6 August -- the start of the 1994-1996 Chechen war. The march incident also comes as the Russian authorities are trying to persuade many Chechen refugees that the war is all but over and that it is safe to return home. Yesterday, Vladimir Yelagin, the minister coordinating federal authorities in Chechnya, said some 15,000 families could return home within the next two months. Jan Pazderka coordinates the Chechen program for the Czech charity "People in Need" and has just returned from a year in the region. He is skeptical of such official statements. "This estimate is not realistic. Official comments like this have been coming out for six months or a year. The Russian government is pushing for a lot of these people to come back, but the living conditions are not good enough for that, particularly as regards security. People are scared to go back; young people get arrested, there's torture, sweeps that often result in loss of property, looting, and crime is higher than in Ingushetia." He says there is constant movement across the Ingush-Chechen border, but that he has noticed an increase recently in the number of people coming into Ingushetia, especially in the wake of violent raids by Russian forces on the villages of Sernovodsk, Assinovskaya, and Kurchaloi. Many civilians disappeared following the raids, and Russian forces faced allegations of atrocities amid reports that troops beat and tortured villagers. Daniil Mesherikov at the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights watchdog, says refugees will not return until they receive security guarantees. "The refugees are in a desperate situation. There are no conditions for normal life in the camps. Deliveries of food are continually being held up. Sanitation is awful. Even though the refugees have been there a relatively long time, little has been done to improve their lives. None of the initiatives to return refugees have been accompanied by security guarantees. There have been more and more frequent sweep operations in the areas where refugees are meant to return to. So, as a consequence, they prefer to live in these very difficult conditions, in relative safety." The conditions include poor hygiene, sparse medical care, and frequent outbreaks of tuberculosis and other diseases. Accommodation ranges from organized camps, to homes of relatives or friends, to so-called "wild camps," where people find what refuge they can in pens originally designed for animals. The Russian authorities say they would be much better off back home as most of the dwelling houses in the republic received little or no damage from the fighting. But Pazderka says the scale of destruction varies across the republic, and most of Grozny is flattened. And anyway, he says, this is to miss the point. "The main question for these people is not where to live but the fear they have for their children, themselves, their relatives, and that's why a large number of these 150,000 or so people are still staying in Ingushetia." Mesherikov says the Russian authorities' attempts to encourage people to return will fail until civilians feel sure they will not become victim to abuses by Russian forces. "The authorities should demonstrate their peaceable mood by ruling out the use of force against unarmed people. Only after this, after an extended period of calm, will people voluntarily return to Chechnya." He says that unless the authorities start peace talks with separatist Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, the refugees will assume that the conflict will escalate and there will be a real threat to their safety. ******* #6 Jane's Defence Weekly August 1, 2001 [for personal use only] NATO, Russia Compare Force Levels By Luke Hill, JDW NATO/EU Affairs Correspondent, Brussels An unprecedented level of openness on the size and purpose of the conventional forces of NATO and Russia marked the monthly meeting of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC) held on 18 July. Nevertheless, Russian officials expressed reservations about encroachment from the West, participants in the meeting told Jane's Defence Weekly. NATO briefed Russian officials on the status of the alliance's implementation of its new force structure, agreed in December 1998 but yet to be fully implemented. Under that plan, NATO would have the ability to mount three concurrent corps-sized operations, with appropriate naval and air elements, and to sustain them for up to two years - in addition to territorial defence and further operations of less than corps-size. NATO is preparing to name three high readiness (0 to 90 days) corps headquarters (HQs), three separate high-readiness maritime HQs and six lower readiness (91 to 180 days) HQs. "What they got from us was an unprecedented briefing on the current force structure and force posture, akin to ministerial advice," a NATO official at the meeting told JDW. NATO's current threat assessments do not envisage an invasion of NATO territory, "so as far as the forces themselves are concerned, the balance between forces optimised for collective defence and those able to be deployed for non-Article 5 crises response operations is clearly moving in the direction of the latter, leading to a reduction of the total number of forces required," said a NATO PJC briefing paper obtained by JDW. Besides an overall reduction in forces, the number of forces stationed on other allies' territory has also decreased. For example, the paper noted, the number of allied forces stationed in Germany has declined from 420,000 in 1990 to about 102,000 today. Further, in the last 10 years there have been overall reductions in land forces of 34% (from about 300 combat brigades to 197); in combat ships by 34% (from 770 to 510); and in combat aircraft of 44% (from about 5,020 to 2,810), NATO said. "We expect this downward trend to continue in the short term as allies continue to restructure their forces to take account of the new strategic environment," the briefing paper said. "Our security assessment does not point to keeping such a high level of forces on high readiness," added the NATO official. The Russian presentation - far less specific because NATO received a briefing on overall Russian military structures earlier this year (down by some 30,000 'units' in the past 10 years) - focused on the northwest region near Norway and Finland where Russian combat forces have been reduced by 40% and there now exists no capability to mount an offensive. "This is to show that we have no intention there to make an offensive," a Russian official told JDW. "We do have some concern about NATO's developing capabilities." Under NATO's 1999 Strategic Concept the alliance does not foresee the need now to build up forces to counter a territorial threat from the east, but those capabilities could still be put in place. Further, it provides consultation with any active partner member that feels its territory is threatened by an unidentified, "large, populous and well equipped nation". "There is only one nation like this - us - so the strategic concept allows NATO to be involved in all countries of the former Soviet Union, right up to our borders. This causes us concern about NATO military development and especially enlargement," the Russian official said. He added that the PJC talks were "the right step" towards providing further transparency and clarification in these matters. A co-operative joint statement on Balkans peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and Bosnia and the smouldering situation in Macedonia, where the two sides called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, was the only other subject for discussion in the PJC. ******* #7 Putin hosts "no-ties" CIS summit in seaside resort MOSCOW, Aug 2 (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that most leaders of former Soviet republics agreed to preserve the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during their informal summit in southern Russia. However Putin conceded that the at-times unwieldy loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics could not prevent member states from striking their own economic and military accords. Moscow has attempted to use the CIS, which excludes the three Baltic states, as a vehicle for its post-Soviet regional ambitions but the union has been criticized for failing to achieve any concrete economic or security results. "The summit was very useful and very open, and we did not avoid even the most difficult issues," Putin said following a working session of the informal "no-ties" meet in the southern Russian resort city of Sochi. "Basically, no one argued against the thesis that following the Soviet Union's collapse, the CIS remains the most effective structure" for guiding relations between the ex-Soviet republic, ITAR-TASS quoted Putin as saying. "The CIS leaders also agreed that, within the union's frameworks, various regional organizations can also develop ... to solve security, economic and humanitarian issues," Putin said. Yet underlining the CIS's diminishing regional role, Thursday's gathering was snubbed by Georgian President Eduard Shevernadze and Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov. Some have dubbed the CIS as a "divorce court" for the former republics, with Shevernadze in particular preparing his nation for a potential alliance with the United States and NATO. He has also been accused by Russia of sheltering guerrilla fighters from separatist Chechnya. Turkmenistan's Niyazov meanwhile has displayed increasingly isolationist tendencies, much to the disappointment of Russia, which is hoping to tap his nation's vast natural gas fields. One of the main issues on Thursday's agenda were preparations for a formal, grand September gathering in Moscow to mark the commonwealth's 10-year anniversary. During a series of bilateral meeting that were due to follow Thursday, the heads of state were expected to tackle a mountain of regional disputes, including a recent flare-up over the division of the Caspian Sea, and its suspected oil reserves. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran approached a crisis point when an Iranian warship approached an Azeri exploring vessel last week in disputed waters of the Caspian. A direct confrontation was averted, but all of the other Caspian states, including Russia, have voiced concerns over the incident, expressing a new willingness to finally solve the decade-old oil dispute. Putin was expected to brief his guests on his recent talks with US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about the US plan to set up a missile shield, to which Russia strenuously objects. They were also set to discuss the situation in Afghanistan -- which many see as a source of instability in Central Asia -- and the events unfolding in the Middle East and the Balkans. ******* #8 INTL. COMPANIES SAY THEY DO NOT FEAR RUSSIAN ANTI-GLOBALISTS MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) - International corporations operating in Russia have said they do not fear Russian anti-globalists. Coca-Cola's Russian public relations chief said, "There hasn't been a single case in Russia of anti-globalists attacking a Coca-Cola truck." The most that Russian anti-globalists can do is break a bottle of Coke, Dmitry Shulga told Interfax. "But this can't inflict any damage on the company because one must buy a bottle before breaking it." "We have 11 factories in the country and all of them are situated on the outskirts, so not every anti-globalist would be able to reach them. "Even if anti-globalists did form a well-developed movement in Russia, it is only fast food restaurants that would have to fear them because [such restaurants] are located where passions are boiling." However, a source at McDonald's Russia said there had not been a single instance of a McDonald's restaurant in Russia being vandalized. "There may be anti-globalist movements in Russia, but they are not as active as in Europe and so we are not afraid of them," the source said. McDonald's has 68 restaurants in Russia. It has opened eight restaurants this year and plans to open another nine before the year's end and more than 20 next year. Earlier on Wednesday, the acting chairman of Russia's National Bolshevik Party said it is possible but very difficult to carry out any large-scale anti-globalism protests in Russia. "One reason, of course, why an anti-globalist crowd of many thousands such as that in Genoa wouldn't gather is that Russia hasn't signed the Schengen agreement and Western anti-globalists will simply not be let across the border," Anatoly Tishin told Interfax. Nevertheless, he warned, the National Bolshevik Party will definitely take some kind of action if Russia hosts international meetings in which world leaders take part. But "ransacking McDonald's restaurants is a stage that is long past," he said. ******** #9 THE JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION Prism: a monthly on the post-Soviet states July 2001 Volume VII, Issue 7 Part 3 WILL THE "NEW PARTNERSHIP" SUCCEED? By Sergei Oznobishchev Sergei Oznobishchev is director of the Institute for Strategic Assessments. The Russian-American summit that took place in June near Ljubljana did not vindicate pessimistic forecasts, though these were not unfounded. Here is a typical summary, made just prior to the summit by a respected news agency, of an analysis of assessments offered in the media of various countries: "In the West, just as in Russia, there are no illusions regarding the summit in Slovenia. British and American newspapers believe that the very fact that the presidents will meet personally should be counted a success. Journalists [after all] describe the positions of Putin and Bush as irreconcilable." How is it, then, that this irreconcilability developed so quickly and with such apparent ease into almost undisguised friendliness? I do not think that the two presidents are such accomplished artists that they put on for the whole world a beautifully acted performance that might be called "Shoots of Friendship." No, for all the conventions of these high level meetings, and the need for official smiles and overly long handshakes for the cameras, not even the greatest masters of the stage--not just the political stage--could have put on such a sincere show of mutual rapport. Objectively, the rapid deterioration in relations between our countries, where the political elites practically wrote each other off as potential partners in international business, did not augur well for a favorable outcome. In decisionmaking circles there were decidedly anti-American and anti-Russian feelings in Moscow and Washington respectively. Giving a paper at the Gorbachev Foundation in May this year, I offered the hypothesis, which many people did not think justified at the time, that there may turn out to be more subjective preconditions than objective ones for an appreciable improvement in Russian-American relations today. In the end, that is how it turned out. There has been a historical precedent for this, incidentally--when amidst mutual recriminations and a high degree of confrontation in the 1980s (suffice to recall the epithet of the "evil empire" coined in Washington to describe the other side), Reagan and Gorbachev managed to move towards an end to the Cold War. There is an internal contradiction in the very concept of the "new partnership" of the title. It implies that there used to be some sort of "old" partnership that was somehow forfeited. This was indeed the case in the early 1990s when Yeltsin declared that Russia and the United States were partners, allies and even friends. But despite such proclamations, American-Russian relations throughout the 1990s showed consistency in only one respect: They were consistently deteriorating. Russian politicians and analysts became increasingly aggrieved with Western leaders for their attempts to exclude Russia from the decisionmaking process on fundamental European and international issues. The main reasons for this were the selfish policy of NATO expansion (despite fierce opposition on the part of Russia) and the use of force to resolve the Kosovo crisis, bypassing UN procedures and opinion in Moscow. Meanwhile, Yeltsin's inconsistency in securing domestic ratification of foreign policy agreements meant that the West came to rely less and less on Russia. As a consequence, the whole process of reducing and destroying weapons came to almost a complete standstill. The use of force to resolve the parliamentary crisis in 1993, the start of the Chechen war, and the frequent illnesses and "disappearances" of the Russian president forced the West to adopt an increasingly cautious--even wary-- attitude to Moscow. Essentially relations between the countries-- especially after spy scandals, diplomatic incidents, exposures and mutual expulsions--were balanced precariously on the edge of a "cold peace," with the clear potential to descend into a farcical cold war (there would hardly have been sufficient grounds or funds for a full-scale cold war like that of the 1960s and 1970s). But Putin and Bush took a liking to each other, which immediately presented an opportunity for a constructive solution to longstanding problems. Behind the outward displays of friendliness, of course, lay an understanding of the fact that the absence even of pragmatic interaction (or "equal cooperation," as recent Russian national security documents like to put it) condemns us to live in a much more dangerous and unpredictable world, and pushes us towards excessive military spending. The two presidents surprised many people by going far beyond the bounds of the official business of making each other's acquaintance and exchanging the views they had prepared back at home. The main achievement of Putin and Bush was to avoid getting bogged down in the details of the mutual recriminations that had been building up, and to talk seriously about the fundamentals of the U.S.-Russian relationship. For decades, relations between the two countries suffered because politicians would, for the sake of appearances, get actively involved in secondary issues rather than solve the fundamental issues between them. It may be said, for example, that in the context of the problem of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which has yet to be effectively resolved, building a missile defense system is one individual option and certainly not the most effective way of handling this increasingly alarming phenomenon. Or, for example, a balanced analysis of NATO expansion would probably reveal that this is the last of a whole range of possible instruments for encouraging the process of "expanding democracy" to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and giving them back their European identity. This set approach meant that Russian-American relations were too often teetering on the brink of crisis, and periods of declared partnership were quickly superseded by tension. Moreover, one result of the longstanding, unenterprising and at the same time self-centered policy with regard to Russia was the renewed "ideologization" of relations, in the sense that any decisions or measures taken by one party was automatically perceived negatively by the other. Far too many unresolved problems and issues of varying importance piled up, undermining relations; this is further evidence of how all has not been well for a long time. Prior to the summit, some analysts, including myself, suggested a practical platform for future Russian-American cooperation: "To begin seeking a consensus on the fundamental concepts in the field of politics and security, on the priorities in terms of the threats and challenges to the security of both countries, and on measures to tackle them together. This work should be accompanied by dialog at all possible levels, and discussions should begin immediately to agree on its specific forms" (see Chto delat's Amerikoi? [What is to be done with America?], S. Oznobishchev, I. Runov, Dipkurier NG, supplement to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 24, 2001). It turned out that the two sides adopted this very principle as the basis for their initial follow-up actions after the summit. At the postsummit press conference, President Vladimir Putin described the understanding reached on this issue as follows: "We must think together about the threats and concerns--we must define what the threats are, see where they are, and then decide how to confront them. It is better to do this together: To identify a common platform, and then look for a joint solution." If the proposed "fundamental" approach to building bilateral relations triumphs, then the creation of a missile defense system and the expansion of NATO will simply be individual issues in the context of a joint security program. And if the two sides decide to resort to such measures, it will only be on the basis of a joint decision, and whether they consider these actions prudent if other mechanisms for ensuring security do not work. It was the gap between word and deed in the 1990s that made the bilateral "strategic partnership"--about which so much was said-- impossible. It seems that this time the opportunity is there to avoid past mistakes. This opportunity lies in the established "vertical of executive power" in Russia, and in the far broader opportunities the president now has for carrying out his international promises--as we have already seen with the ratification of the START II, nuclear test ban and "open skies" treaties, which Yeltsin was unable to achieve over many years. There is every reason to suppose that, however much the bureaucracy moans and however much individual politicians pontificate, Putin will manage to quash the domestic opposition to cooperation with the United States that has gained force over the last few years. He will undoubtedly be helped by pragmatic considerations: Russia, which is striving to take its rightful place among other leading states, cannot achieve this without intensive contacts with the West, first and foremost the United States. Possible routes towards compromise began mapping themselves out immediately after the meeting was over. Speaking at the press conference, Putin once again conceded the possibility of Russia joining NATO. This paradoxical solution may contain a way out of the impasse that has been reached: Russia's involvement in NATO will serve to change the nature of the organization, giving it a truly pan-European character and rendering its expansion acceptable. At the same time, after this European tour the U.S. position was toned down. Having visited Madrid, Brussels, Gothenburg and Warsaw before Ljubljana, George W. Bush had obviously failed to secure clear support for his missile defense plans, which have not yet finally been formulated. It is worth remembering that in the 1980s too, European leaders seriously toned down attempts by the Reagan administration to erode the limitations of the antimissile treaty. There are still a great many steps to be taken on the road to establishing new relations and producing a joint strategy, which the U.S. president hopes will happen. Both leaders effectively announced a program of joint measures, which, it is to be hoped, will be developed and enhanced from meeting to meeting, and from summit to summit, the dates of which have also been penciled in. It should not be forgotten that while relations can be destroyed very quickly, improving them is a long and complex process. This means that we will all need a great deal of patience before we can gain confidence in each other and really learn to work together rather than adopting diametrically opposed stances on practically every issue. The presidents laid down their fundamental, common position: Russia and the United States are not enemies, and are no threat to each other, but are partners and may well become allies. What was said is nothing less than a reversal in our mutual perception of each other. Anyone who doubts this would do well to take a look at the national security documents of the two countries over the last few years: The contrast in the perception and categorization of the two sides will be truly striking. Having once again initiated discussions of partnership, it is important that the two sides do not limit themselves to discussions, but begin to create a stable, positive equilibrium, moving onto concrete, practical measures. It would seem that the two sides are set to move in that direction: Bush and Putin agreed to instruct their ministers to continue working not only on specific security issues, but also on other prospective issues, including trade and economics. Here not only America but Russia too will need to do a lot to create reliable conditions for investment and business development. Putin acknowledged this. In broad terms, Russia and the United States will have to do a great deal to adjust their image in order to be seen by the other side as a real partner, because without this it will be impossible to establish respectful and trusting relations. Russia will have to assuage U.S. fears in respect of the provision of basic rights and freedoms, first and foremost freedom of the press. Attempts to "privatize" independently run media outlets by structures controlled by the state do not reflect well on Russia's image in the West. It should not be forgotten that for our Western arms control partners, the level of press freedom and basic rights and freedoms are an important element in assessing the possibility of cooperation with a particular state, and the extent of that cooperation. Although the application of this criterion in western politics is often relative and on a case-by-case basis, it has nevertheless been seen to play a role in foreign policy decisions in Western capitals on a number of occasions. For their part, Western leaders must always be aware that while Russian politics today is becoming more defined, it is still--just like the country--in a state of transition where its priorities are being determined. In this state it is very dependent on the actions of the West. In fact, actions taken by Western leaders today, whether constructive or not, are capable of exerting a very considerable influence on the direction of Russian politics tomorrow. In this context, Western politicians should understand that if they continue the shortsighted and self-centered policies of the 1990s, they will create huge problems for themselves in Russia and elsewhere. Only a joint determination to eradicate the concerns of the other side will be capable of converting the theory of partnership into practice. This summit meeting has resurrected that hope. ******* #10 The Russia Journal July 27-Auguste 2, 2001 'Spying damages relations more than before' Ex-CIA chief speaks out on NATO and U.S.-Russia cooperation By YURY SIGOV With the fall of the Soviet Union now a decade behind us, relations between Moscow and Washington are still tense. In the second installment of a two-part interview, The Russia Journal talks with retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA from 1977-81 and a man who has seen the friction from the inside. Turner, who headed the agency when Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter held the reins of power, had earlier served as commander of the U.S. 2nd Fleet and commanded NATO's southern flank. During his time at the CIA, he controversially modernized its operational methods, steering its information-gathering toward "technical collection systems" including satellites and bugging devices, and cutting back on the use of human operatives in a bid to get one up on the KGB. In this interview, conducted in Washington, he discusses NATO expansion, Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush and future relations between the two powers. The Russia Journal: Russia believes that NATO expansion is a major threat to its security. While official documents in Russia take this line, NATO is inching closer to the country's borders, and 2003 is set to mark a new wave of expansion. How can Moscow resolve this issue - should it oppose NATO politically and militarily or seek to become a member itself? Adm. Stansfield Turner: I personally don't support any further NATO expansion; I think [Russia] should have more time to adapt to this. NATO should be more patient about enlarging its ranks. I would like this process to be slowed down, but NATO is expanding, and it is a reality. Meanwhile, you have to understand why the Europeans are so anxious to join NATO. Several years ago in Prague during a conference I met former Polish President Lech Walesa. I asked him directly: "Why do you want to be in NATO?" And he replied almost immediately: "Because the Russians will be back". But bear in mind, too, that there are more [ethnic] Polish voters in this country [the United States] than there are Russian voters. And they are influential in America, and they have more political power in the States than Russians do. I don't know why NATO still exists. We created it because of a threat from the Soviet Union. Now the U.S.S.R. doesn't exist anymore. And, again, I don't like it, but I predict that NATO will continue to expand. RJ: During their summit in Slovenia, Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush seemed to establish good personal relations. The Russian president was praised at home for the way he handled his meeting with the U.S. president, while Bush was criticized at home for being taken in by spymaster Putin. Did the presidents really find a common language, or did they just play to the cameras for their own PR campaigns? ST: I think that in this case we have two amateur politicians who came to face the realities of their duties and the complex world around them. And this reality is very simple: The countries should get along with each other, talk to each other and not spit at each other. Before they met for the first time, everybody expected that they would spit at each other. It's good that they talked, and that they acted as responsible leaders. They promised to meet more, and this is good. RJ: Given Putin's KGB past, will Americans ever feel they can trust him? ST: You remember how President [Richard] Nixon went to China in 1972 and opened this country for America. He was a Republican, nobody thought he could do that, but he did. I think that Putin, being a former KGB officer, can do much more for cooperation between the CIA and KGB than any other Russian president. RJ: Before the elections in the United States, George W. Bush was portrayed in the Russian media as an ignorant politician who didn't know the names of world leaders and countries and almost never traveled abroad. Is he really like that, and how will he handle relations with Russia? ST: Of course, Bush is much smarter than many people think. Speaking about Russia, his background shows quite strong anti-Soviet feelings, since he represents this wing of the Republican Party. But he is changing. He is listening to the advice of his close teammates; he knows that it would be bad to be in a conflict with Russia. He believes that we can trust Russia now. We are not afraid of Russia because it is too weak, and so let's cooperate. RJ: But with all this "trust" in Russians, Bush expelled 50 Russian diplomats earlier this year, accusing them of spying; and the action seriously damaged relations between Moscow and Washington. Can there be any trust between our two countries if we are still spying on each other? ST: You know, during the Cold War we did this kind of thing, expelling spies from America. We expected that you were spying on us and you expected that we were spying on you. Now that the Cold War is over, we are supposed to spy on each other less. Ironically, it is more costly to relations between the countries to catch spies in the post-Cold war era than it was before. When I was CIA director, sometimes we expelled other people, sometimes we exchanged them for others, like it was in the case of [Natan] Scharansky, who was exchanged for your people who were in our jail being caught for spying. I don't know what real harm [Robert] Hanssen did to us, but the newspapers wrote that he did something terrible. In this country people read these stories and believe that this man really did something horrible. Hanssen did something wrong being an American. But people should know that the KGB has considerably increased the number of its people here in the States, especially in Washington. And Americans think that has happened because of Putin, because he is from the KGB. The U.S. president had to react to this, and Bush did what he thought was appropriate. RJ: Instead of spying on each other, couldn't our intelligence agencies cooperate more in fighting international crime and other common threats? ST: Fighting international terrorism could be one of these issues. Cooperation in intelligence is very difficult. I know about this as a former CIA director. Special services are not willing to trust each other, but it would be possible to cooperate in the terrorism field. Neither Russia nor the United States can do this job on its own. How could they do it? For example, the FSB might get a tip that a Ukrainian scientist went for a vacation to Iraq. The Germans might find a company selling fusion equipment to Baghdad. There could be other tips from other sources. Later, we could analyze this information and act jointly. In this cooperation, there should be a precondition - in order to keep the trust between two agencies we shouldn't try to identify our sources from which we got this information. We just share information and cooperate, keeping our secrets secret. So, the fight against international terrorism is an obvious field where we could cooperate. Narcotics are another aspect. We are vulnerable, and we could get important information from Russia in order to fight this evil. RJ: Will U.S.-Russia relations be better after the Putin-Bush meeting in Genoa, or will we still be looking at each other with suspicion and mistrust? I think much will depend on the state of the Russian economy. If your economy improves, that will be good. If you fail, Russia will blame the United States for not helping. Currently, your success depends much more on Moscow than Washington. You know, when the U.S.S.R. collapsed, it was a big and unexpected issue for us. Of course, we knew that the Soviet economy was in a very bad shape. It was not a problem for the CIA to understand that. But we couldn't imagine that public opinion in the Soviet Union would have had the impact it did and bring the government down. (Yury Sigov is U.S. bureau chief for Novye Izvestia.) ****** #11 US Department of State 27 July 2001 Text: Commerce's Evans at American Chamber of Commerce in Russia 7/27 (U.S., Russia have opportunity to improve commercial relations) (2730) The United States and Russia have a "window of opportunity" to take their commercial relations to "a new level as ... recent market reforms by the Duma and President [Vladimir] Putin take hold," said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans in Moscow July 27. Evans, speaking before the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, announced that he will be leading a trade mission to Russia in mid-October 2001 - his first as Commerce Secretary - "to send the signal that the time has come to expand our commercial ties here." After praising Russia for making major reforms in fiscal policy and cutting taxes, Evans said the U.S. Commerce Department "will continue to work with Russia to revamp its tax system through our bilateral commercial tax-working group." Two other items high on the U.S.-Russia trade agenda are Russian entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the need for an effective tax and regulatory framework that would allow foreign energy companies to enter into production sharing arrangements with Russia, he said. Evans also explained that the top item on the Bush Administration's trade agenda is securing from Congress Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) -- also known as "fast track" because it would permit the Bush administration to negotiate trade agreements that Congress cannot amend, but can only approve or reject by a given deadline. Evans concluded his remarks by talking about the relationship between trade and democratic values, calling free and open trade "a foundation for democracy and political stability." "Just imagine what free trade could accomplish here in this vast country of Russia," Evans said. "Think of the new jobs ... the new wealth ... the new consumer choices ... and the new confidence that all these things would bring. It would be a victory for human dignity, and for human liberty."